Glass Walls
by Ophium
Summary: When a new patient lands in House's hands, it becomes clear for him and his team that more is at risk than this man's life. Letting him die might mean losing one of their own in the process. Spoilers up to season two. Chase centric story. Completed.
1. Chapter 1

GLASS WALLS

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There was something about the sound that the wind made as it passed through the rustling leaves that left the man pacified inside.

He looked up, gazing upon the unfamiliar tree tops, slightly amazed by the fact that only yesterday it had been spring in his own home and here, on the other side of the world, he was surrounded already by the dark red shades of autumn leaves.

He took a deep breath, savouring the fresh air of the park, intended on forgetting everything that had been going on in his complicated life. A cleansing breath to replace the dull ache inside his chest with nothing but the red shades of the autumn leaves and the slight chill of the night.

He felt a dull pain inside that had nothing to do with his heavy consciousness, his right hand clasped around the buttons of his shirt in a desperate attempt to minimize the growing discomfort. The small sense of serenity that he had so longed for abandoned him and was soon replaced by an instant sense of imminent death.

The man gasped, trying to fill his starving lungs with the fresh air that had been so cleansing before, but the foreigner air never made it past his throat as he collapsed on the ground.

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CHAPTER I

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"You'd already said I could!" The loud voice of the man could be heard outside of the glass walled office.

"Do you think you can not sound like a five year old?" A woman's voice replied in a much quieter tone.

"But moooom!..."

The young woman on duty on the nurse' station, on the main lobby of the Princeton's Plainsboro Teaching Hospital Free Clinic tried to hide her smile for the sake of maintaining a professional stance in front of the surrounding patients, but it was a next to impossible task.

Whenever those two started one of their famous shouting matches, two things were always almost sure to happen: first one being that, more often than not, it would be entertaining to hear and second…

"Give it up House… a free pass from clinic duty implies that you're actually working on something else, like a PATIENT, so quite staling and go gather your minions or something… besides, I saw the look on your face when you read his file, so don't act like you're not interested…"

"You're no fun to play with…" the older man mumbled as he limped out of her office.

… Lisa Cudy, more often than not, got what she wanted.

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It had taken a while to get used to work in a place where all the walls were made of glass.

The constant comings and goings of a number of hospital employees on the corridors outside meant that privacy was little to none but it also added to a shared community feeling that was supposed to make everyone collaborate more freely with everybody else. That true inter-professional cooperation that health care gurus are always preaching about.

In reality what it actually achieved was a continuous loss of inhibitions from the people working there.

Doctors, as a social class _per se_, felt obligate from their early years in school, to act in a certain way, behave in a certain form. Maintain the respect that the medical professional had spent decades achieving.

The three doctors occupying the sunny office of the Clinical Diagnostic's department had, like all others, suffered the influence of a glass working environment. Working for someone like Gregory House hadn't helped either.

Leaning against the coffee counter, her auburn hair framed by the soft morning light, Dr. Cameron was stirring her second cup of coffee, the turning spoon in her hand forgotten as she absent minded turned her drink in to a soon-to-be caffeine-shake.

Dr. Foreman was the only one actually seated at the table that occupied most of the office, a medical journal opened in front of him, the written lines ignored as his brown gaze got lost in the waiving trees outside.

He had stayed up late the night before, sleep evading his bed as a twelfth century virgin on her wedding night, and he was paying for it now.

From the outside, the last person inside the office was the hardest to spot, half seating, half lying on the soft chair that stood beside the opened door.

Dr. Chase was balancing a nearly empty coffee mug on his crossed leg, an already well chewed pencil dangling from his teeth as he searched his sleeping brain for a thirteen letters word to describe the science that studied natural rhythms.

"Forty five year old male found collapsed on the park this morning. He woke in the ER complaining of a head ache and stomach discomfort. Tox screen was clean, glycaemia was low but within range, heart rate and blood pressure were normal, EKG and CT scan were clean. Differential?"

Foreman and Chase, both with their backs turned to the door and their eyelids almost closed, had jumped from their respective seats upon hearing House's voice. As usual, he had arrived silently, taking them by surprise, firing information about their new case left and right, knowing that if they weren't quick enough to keep up with him, they were in the wrong department.

"Does this mean we have a patient?" Cameron, finally deciding to give her coffee a rest, asked, looking at the black words that were quickly being scribbled on the white board.

"No, I just thought about making one up, to entertain you all," House's chronic sarcasm answered her.

"TIA," Foreman, the neurologist of the three offered. "Small cloth momentarily obstructs the blood flow in the brain, the guy loses consciousness. Cloth dissolves by itself, leaves no marks, no damage."

"The guy had no other symptoms prior to his collapse. TIA's are usually land mines that signal the big, bad stroke that will come. He would get a number of other neurological symptoms before just collapsing," House countered, even as he added the three letters to the board.

"Usual doesn't mean that it always happens like that," Foreman added, remembering that if there was a place when the unusual usually happened, that place was here.

"Ok, more ideas?"

"Psychological condition?" Cameron offered, remembering a number of conditions that could have physically affected the man. "Schizophrenia, panic attack, maybe just simple old stress?"

"Panic attacks cause hyperventilation, which would've elevated his CO2 levels to toxic levels, before causing a collapse," Chase reminded her as he flipped through the patient's file. "His blood gases were normal."

"Apart from the blood vessel, it could be some sort of neurological dysfunction, an early onset of Alzheimer's, or…"

"Carotid sinus hypersensibility," Chase offered, noticing that House didn't seem too inclined to blame anything above the neck for the man's condition. "If he turned his head too fast, the hypersensibility could've caused him to knock himself out."

House scribbled their suggestions, his hand writing on its on accord as the older doctor's brain ran away with another theory, one that he hadn't heard yet from his minions.

"Get him a full blood work, a brain MRI, test his carotid sinus and get me a stress EKG. Let's see if we can race his heart hard enough to get a repeat performance," he finally said, covering the bases on all that had been said.

"His heart?" Foreman dared to ask.

"If the brain is working, Mr. Neurologist, who do you think we can blame next for killing all the lights in the house?" He asked, glaring at the other man like he was missing the point entirely. "While you're at it, go check his place and get me a better history on the man. We know nothing about this guy other than the fact that he ain't from around here."

The three younger doctors paused at the door, curious about House's latest statement. Cameron reopened the patient's file, searching for a meaning, but soon gave up. If she knew House well enough, he wouldn't have launched the bait if he didn't intended to catch the fish.

Chase bit the bait for them.

"Not from around here as in…?"

"As in a mate of yours," House said in a perfect Australian accent. "Now go find me what's wrong with Crocodile Dundee."

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"Chase will never hear the end of this," Cameron said to Foreman as the two of them made their way to the patient's room.

Taking a family history had always been Cameron's alley, while Chase was well known for his love for invasive procedures and Foreman for his ability with complicated testing and machinery.

House breaking, however, was something that none of them was notorious for, despite House's comments about Foreman's 'colourful' past and Chase's growing abilities with a credit card.

However, since Foreman's nearly deadly contagion at a patient's home a few months back, they had decide among themselves that whenever law breaking activities were in order, they would leave it to chance to decide whose turn it was at jail time bait.

The short straw had landed on Chase's hand this time around, leaving the testing to the other two until he returned, hopefully, with some answers.

"If it wasn't the patient's accent, it would be something else," Foreman said with a rare smile. "And while he's picking on Chase, he isn't picking on us, so you won't hear me complain."

And that was always a plus when it came to their boss. Between his sexist remarks to Cameron and his racist comments to Foreman, both had enough fodder to sue the man at least once a week. The fact that he was a recognized genius and that they couldn't learn much from him if he was in jail or unemployed was the only thing keeping both away from a good lawyer. Chase had to deal with both the sexist and the foreigner comments, but like Foreman had once warned him, after all that time working with House, Stockholm's syndrome had already set in. It was too late for him.

Foreman stopped suddenly, causing Cameron to bump in to his back. She looked up to see what had caused him to freeze in the middle of the corridor, but he gave her no time.

"Call security!" He yelled as he tossed to the floor the instruments tray that he'd been carrying and raced to their patient's room.

Behind the glassed walls, almost hidden from view by the semi-closed blinds, she finally realized what had sprung Foreman in to action.

An Asian man, dressed in a suit, was standing above their patient, hands around his neck, trying to squeeze whatever life was left, out of the Australian man.

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The harsh sound of a metal tray hitting the floor as Foreman dashed away clued everyone in that something was happening.

Cameron's frantic call for security was a foreseen consequence for all that worked there for more than a couple of years.

Princeton Plainsboro, like every other hospital, had always had its fair share of dramatic episodes, from patients that reacted badly to a procedure or a diagnostic, to family members that weren't so good at accepting bad news, to simple lunatics that got out of control.

There had always been the occasional yelling, a couple of flying fists here and there, some unfortunate items broken now and again, some glass shattered maybe once a year.

Ever since the Diagnostic's department had started its functions, the drama had just seemed to escalate.

Broken glass was now an almost weekly occurrence; punches being thrown left and right were so normal that people didn't even seem to notice them anymore; and more dramatic than anything that had ever occurred in there, House being shot in his own office nearly a year ago had left everyone feeling a little bit jittery.

With all of that, it was no wonder that exactly twenty seconds after Cameron's alert, two security guards had showed up racing to meet her. They noticed the commotion inside the room Foreman had gone in to and quickly followed.

The man that had been trying to kill their patient had his hand now around Foreman's neck, whose eyebrow was slowly seeping blood in to his left eye.

Seeing the security guards racing in to the room, the killer quickly realized that the situation had just escaped his control. He let go of the black doctor's neck and reached in to his leather coat.

The security guards, prohibit of carrying any fire weapons inside the hospital grounds, froze on their tracks as they saw the metallic deadly piece that had suddenly appeared on the strange man's hand.

Foreman visibly paled as he saw the gun too, realizing that his foolish dash in to the patient's room may had just cost him his life. The security guards behind him couldn't do anything to protect him and by the time the police arrived, he could either be dead or on his way there.

The whole event looked kind of surreal to Foreman, in what he thought to be his last moments. He looked at the patient he had so unsuccessfully tried to save.

For a forty five year older, the man had a precocious head-full of white hair. The skin of his face had a leathery look about it, like that of a person that spends too much time on the outside. The lack of too many wrinkles around his eyes and mouth told Foreman that not much of that time had been spent laughing.

The patient was already unconscious when he had arrived at the room, probably in respiratory arrest, but Foreman never had the time to even check. The killer had turned on him the second he had slide the glass door open, backhanding him with such force that the younger man had crashed against the ventilator machine standing next to the bed, just in case it was needed.

The irony was that the patient was probably in need of one now, but no one could move to hook him up to it.

The other irony of the situation was that Foreman, a guy that had always prided himself to be reasonable and pondered in his actions, was about to die because of a patient whose name he didn't even knew. A complete stranger.

He would've laughed out loud if there wasn't a gun on his face.

The gunshot was so loud inside the small room that the glass walls shook and threatened to shatter under the onslaught of sound.

Foreman closed his eyes a second before he heard the sound and waited for the pain to hit him.

With his ears ringing, he barely registered the sound of the body hitting the ground. It was the shout of 'all clear' that one of the security guards yelled too near his head that convinced him that he was still alive and that he should open his eyes again.

The killer was on the ground, a growing halo of blood surrounding his head. Someone had opened the window's blinds and the bright sun light came in to the room like an intruder, making everything seem even more brutal and harsh, painting the whole gruesome scene in colours that looked too vivid and raw.

A spongy grey matter, that Foreman assumed to be part of the killer's brain, was barely clinging to the far wall, the only one made of concrete. It was slowing sliding towards the floor, but no one seemed to notice it.

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	2. Chapter 2

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CHAPTER II

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"So, is our patient dead?" House asked his two shaken up lackeys, as they sat in front of him, Cameron nursing a cup of tea and Foreman drinking coffee. The white bandage above his eye made a harsh contrast with the rest of his face, like an intruder that didn't belonged in there.

"He was already in cardiac arrest by the time we managed to get near him, but we were able to bring him back," Cameron replied, her voice steady even as her hands shook around her red mug.

"We have no way of knowing how long he was deprived of oxygen, but my guess is that there was probable brain damage by then," Foreman said, meeting House's intense stare.

He knew what the older man was doing and for once, he appreciated it.

His body was still tingling from the amount of adrenaline still cursing through his arteries, but seating there, in the familiar environment of the Diagnostic's department, acting like this was just another day in the office, was doing more for his nervous system than the two hours he had spend explaining the police what had happened. This was normal. This was safe.

"And the killer?" House's natural curiosity was working overtime in face of such juicy events.

When he had first heard about the commotion, his stomach had turned against him for a couple of seconds. He figured it was either concern over his fellows or the chilly he had eaten last night.

It had taken him the best part of the last couple of hours to get some of the most-likely-to-be-real details from the hospital's gossip-net, before the police released Foreman and Cameron and he could hear it straight from their mouths.

Now that he was sure that they were in fact in one piece, he'd just whished he had been there to see Super Foreman crap his pants.

"Killed himself," Foreman answered with a deafening lack of emotion. "The police couldn't find any ID on him. They left an armed guard with Thomas, just in case someone returns to finish the job."

House's eyes narrowed.

"Thomas being?..."

"The patient."

"Ah!... And where was Chase during all of this?" House asked, noticing that the youngest lackey was no where to be seen.

"Oh God!" Cameron gasped, looking in panic at the two of them.

Both men looked at her, puzzled by her apparent overreaction, until they too understood the cause for her concern.

Foreman rubbed his eyebrow, annoyed that the bandage was starting to itch.

"He went to check the patient's house hours ago," he said for House' sake, although he suspected that the older man had already arrive to that conclusion on his own.

"Do you think the killer went there first?" Cameron asked, the fingers around her mug turning white from the deadly grip she had around it.

"Only if he was able of beaming himself up from place to place," House said acidly. "The patient's house is a good half an hour drive from here and Chase left about the same time as you guys did."

Who ever this Thomas was, he was obviously involved with the wrong type of people. Worst even, he seemed to have pissed in to kill him the wrong type of people.

Logic told House that there was no way Chase and the killer could've crossed paths, but logic also told him that they knew nothing about the killer's motives or even if he was working alone.

"Call Chase," he told Cameron. "Tell him that he can't hide from work all day long… Cudy doesn't like it."

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The first thing that Chase did whenever he opened his car door was to remind himself that he had to drive on the right side of the street, instead of the left.

Even though he'd been in the States for a couple of years now, all it took was one short trip down under for him to forget basic things like that on his daily routines.

After a couple of scares, when he had been driving home too tired or sleepy, he'd found out that a small self-remind was all he needed to avoid getting himself and others in to a car accident.

Getting the short straw had actually been welcomed by him this time around. He was getting bored stiff with all the waiting for a patient to fall on their collective laps routine.

So bored that even the late morning traffic that he had caught while driving there had been welcomed.

Someone had failed to hit the brakes on time and had bumped against the car in front somewhere upfront.

He hadn't seen or heard any ambulances drive by, which meant that the only thing coming out of it had been the traffic jam and probably a large bill at the auto-shop for one of the intervenients. For him, it meant that he could finally finish listening to that CD he'd bought two weeks ago. Maybe he should get an IPod like House…

Thomas Joyce, the patient, had rented a house just outside Princeton, nearly a year ago. From what they could tell from his papers, the man worked for a small factory of microprocessors, whose name none of them had ever heard of before.

His passport told them that Thomas travelled a lot from Australia to Japan to the States, on business, they assumed, and that he had a house on each of the three places.

What his papers didn't told them was Thomas previous conditions, what medications was he allergic to, if he had his shots up to date, what sort of life and what sort of man he was before collapsing on some public park and landing on their hands. The papers couldn't even tell them if there was a next of kind that they should be contacting.

Most of it they could find out by asking the patient directly. Chase hopped that by now Cameron already knew more than he did, but he also knew that the straights facts coming from the patient's mouth wouldn't be enough for House.

Sometimes he felt more like a detective than a doctor, snooping around other people's dirt and trying to find evidence to prove House's most common saying: 'everybody lies'. And the most annoying thing about it was that he was often right too.

With his life scattered across three different countries, Chase could understand why Thomas had chosen the suburbs for his home while on the States.

The two stories house spelled peace and quiet from its swinging wooden chair on the porch to the gravel beneath his feet, which seem to melt away at his passage with a soft grounding sound that strangely reminded Chase of home.

The grass had started to grow out of control and the bushes surrounding the property were starting to take over the place, confirming their guess that this guy wasn't around much. It also gave the house a wild look that made it stand out amongst the other well cared for gardens.

Chase smiled as he fished a set of keys from his jacket's pocket. If there had been one thing he had learned from Foreman was that preparing in advance and actually snatch the keys from the patient's things, before braking in, saved a lot of time.

He briefly wondered if the term 'breaking in' would still apply if he used a set of keys to get in. He figured it might, to the police, anyway.

There was a certain rush that came along with the notion that he was doing something wrong, something illegal. He often had to justify it to his consciousness that he was doing it for the sake of the patient, that this sort of privacy invasion, while wrong, could save a person's life on the long run.

They were all hollow justifications and he knew it, but they were the best he had to tell himself that it was ok to have fun doing it.

He carefully closed the door behind himself and slipped on a set of gloves, waiting while his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. The air smelled kind of mouldy and Chase thought if it wouldn't be safer to put on a mask as well. Maybe Thomas had a nasty case of toxic mould intoxication.

He thought better of it. None of the patient's symptoms had indicated any sort of contamination and judging from the pile of junk mail that he had stepped on his way in, the smell was probably from the place being closed for too long.

If that was the case, Chase doubted that he would find anything of use in there. But they knew little to nothing about this guy. Including what kind of medication he might have been taking.

The set of stairs to the left of the lobby gave access to the second floor, where he guessed the master bedroom was. Odds were that if there were any meds to be found, they would be either on the bedroom or the nearest bathroom up there.

The top floor was smaller, consisting only of three rooms, one on each end and a larger one on the center. Chase figured that would be the master bedroom. He wasn't wrong.

The sun light struggled to enter through the division's partly closed horizontal blinds. Chase decided to take a risk and clicked open the ceiling light, filling the room with a warm brightness that gave the painted walls an amber shade.

He wasted little time looking around the room, spartan as it was. One large bed, one nightstand and a large built in closed. A door to the right was semi-opened, revealing a bathtub.

Chase went straight for the night stand's drawer, hoping to find some answers there. The whole place seemed to have lost its serenity all of a sudden and he no longer felt like being there at all. The drawer was empty.

Chase clicked open the bathroom light. The faucet's tap was leaking, a soft plack, plack, plack noise each time a water drop fell. There was no wall medicine cabinet, just a mirror. He opened all the drawers of the sink's cabinet, finding nothing more revealing than the patient's brand of after-shave and what sort of razors he used.

Feeling a bit empty handed, Chase hopped that Cameron and Foreman were having better luck with this guy than he was, because as far a he could tell, a ghost lived here.

There had been no pictures in the lobby or the bedroom. The walls had few things hanging from them and the few he had noticed, he was sure he had seen them in some IKEA catalogue before.

The mail had all been junk, nothing personal, not even a bank extract, a phone bill, anything.

He turned the lights off, figuring that as long as he was there, he should check the rest of the place anyway, or else House would chew his ass off and spit it out for fun.

The room farther away from the stairs had been converted in to an office, complete with book shells, a sofa, a phone and a fax machine seating on top of a large wood desk. No computer in sight.

The desk drawers were filled with blank papers, blank CDs still inside their wrapper paper, pens and all sorts of office stuff that he'd expected to find but were of absolutely no use for him. There were no journals on the shells, no appointments book on the desk and the computer, wherever it was, it wasn't there.

He was about to open the door of the last room upstairs when the last sound he had wanted to hear reached his ears. Someone was fumbling with the front door's lock.

With his heart racing and the palms of his hands starting to sweat, Chase panicked, looking around for a place to hide.

The front door opened seconds after the door of the room to the left of the stairs closed.

Chase stood with his ear glued to the door, trying to listen to whoever had arrived. He wanted to bang his head against the door.

He should've thought this through better. Knowing almost nothing about a patient meant they didn't knew if he shared his place with anyone else, meant they didn't knew if the patient had a partner, a lover, a nosy neighbour, or was part of a freaking satanic cult!

He should've waited until Cameron had talked to the patient, he knew that he should've, but he'd been so anxious to get out that he hadn't even stopped to consider that his hastiness could result in him going to jail.

Maybe whoever it was would be sympathetic with his plight and understand his reasons to be where he wasn't supposed to be.

Maybe this was his lucky day and it was just the sweet, very blind and very deaf, unthreatening old lady from next door that had just come to water the non-existing plants and that would leave without ever noticing that a nosy doctor was behind this door, biting his nails.

Chase pressed his ear harder against the door, willing his heart to beat slower and quieter. Whoever it was that had come in, it wasn't an old lady.

He could hear male voices downstairs, two, maybe three. He couldn't understand what they were saying, but it didn't sound like English to him. The cadence was all wrong.

Something crashed downstairs. Dishes being smashed against the floor. It sounded like they were tearing the kitchen apart.

Chase looked at the room where he had taken refuge for the first time. It was a spare bedroom, almost an exact replica of the master bedroom, only smaller and without the adjoining bathroom.

He wondered about the odds of this place being robbed while he was there, but then he figured that bad luck knew no limits, so the odds were apparently pretty high. Either way, if these guys were in the mood to go through the whole place with the same vengeance as they were downstairs, he needed to get out of there fast.

He looked longingly at the bedroom's window, hoping that there was a tree or a pipe near it that he could use to climb down. He peeked outside, stomach falling to his feet. There was nothing remotely safe for him to use to get down, and the free fall looked like a neck breaker to him.

The wrack downstairs seemed to be quietening down, which meant that his time was running short.

Chase considered hiding under the bed, but the bed had only a mattress still in its factory wrapper and no covers. It wouldn't do.

The only place he could go was the closet. He opened the double doors and closed himself inside.

In the dark, surrounded by clothes that smelled like something straight from the eighteen century, Chase found himself praying.

He hadn't done a lot of that lately, not for himself anyway, but then again, he hadn't been this scare in a long time.

He prayed to God for the thieves to be satisfied with the rest of the house and leave this room alone; he prayed to God for at least one of the neighbours to have seen something and call the police; he prayed to God to let him live, because he wasn't ready to die just yet.

He stopped breathing when he heard the door of the room being kicked opened. There were footsteps inside and Chase, inside the closet, refrained from even swallow the spit inside his mouth, afraid that the slightest sound would alert the others to his presence.

He heard the sound of the ceiling light button being pressed, followed by two rapid words in what sounded like angry Japanese to him. The amount of light coming from underneath the closet's doors hadn't changed, so Chase figured that the lights in this room weren't working.

He pressed himself farther in to the clothes, willing his body to shrink in to nothingness. There was something digging uncomfortably against the small of his back, but it didn't register then.

What did register was the door of the closet opening.

Chase stood paralysed, his eyes round and wide as he looked directly in to the face of an Asian young man, waiting to be caught at any second. The man, however, was either ignoring him or unable to see him.

The Asian man fumbled with the hanging clothes in front of Chase for a brief moment before turning his back, uninterested in whatever was there.

Between the dark lit room and the own darkness of the closet, Chase realized that it was too dark for the man to actually see him in the corner of the closet where he had hidden himself. He couldn't believe his luck.

His starving lungs were stinging, reminding him that it was alright to breathe again. Chase aloud himself a shaky inspiration.

His forehead was sticky with sweat and he could feel his legs shaking from the tension they'd been in for far too long. This was why he'd gone in to medicine and not a life of crime. He wasn't cut out for it.

Chase forced himself to calm down and listen. He had to be on alert, in case one of them decided to return to this room to have a better look or in case, as he hoped, they would leave.

Time seemed to move as slowly as a hundred years old man. Chase looked at the glowing numbers in his watch, but not knowing what time it had been when he arrived there, he had no way of knowing how much time had passed.

The house had been silent for awhile when Chase finally decided that he needed to venture out.

More than once he had grabbed the cell phone in his pocket to call the police, but always decided against it.

The thieves could still be around and the fear that they could hear him speak had been one of the reasons to stop his fingers from hitting 911. The other was his lack of a reasonable explanation to be there when the police arrived.

He decided that he would call the police, as soon as he was out of there. An anonymous call, made by a concern citizen, nothing more.

Carefully stepping out of the closet, Chase made his way out of the room, feeling like the cliché blonde on horror movies, the one that always walked straight in to trouble.

The house was eerie silent and with his senses on high alert, every small noise sounded larger than life and would send his heart racing.

The sound of his own phone ringing inside his pocket made Chase jumped in the air and almost race to the door. In a gesture born out of habit, he grabbed the noisy thing and answered it, just to make the loud sound go away. He didn't even bother to look at the dialler's ID.

"What!?" He half whispered, half shouted in to the phone. His eyes were franticly looking around, weary that someone might've jump out of thin air before he forced himself to believe that the thieves were really gone.

It took him a few seconds to realize that Cameron was talking to him. "Come again?"

"Where are you?" She asked once more. "And why are you whispering?"

Was that concern that he had detected in her voice?

"I'm at the patient's house," he told her as he came down the stairs. The place looked like a hurricane had drove by and his footsteps sounded too loud to his ears as he stepped on broken glass. "Look I can't really talk righ…"

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"Chase?... Chase?"

Cameron dropped the phone from her hands and used them instead to cover her mouth. Her grey eyes froze, growing wider behind her glasses. "Oh God!"

"What?" Both Foreman and House asked in choir as they saw their co-worker's face grow paler by the minute.

"Get her a glass of water," House grimly ordered, as he manoeuvred a shocked Cameron to seat on a chair before she fell to the floor. "What did he say?"

"He stopped talking," she slowly said, accepting the glass from Foreman but forgetting to drink it. She was talking to them, but her mind was far away. "He was at the house… and then there was this loud noise and…"

Foreman forced the glass to her lips, seeing that she wouldn't do it by herself. There were tears sliding down her face, but she didn't seem to notice them either.

She looked directly at House, remembering where she had heard that noise before.

"It was a gunshot… I think that Chase was shot!"

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	3. Chapter 3

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CHAPTER III

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"We need to get an ambulance there," Foreman said, already flipping his cell phone open.

House's hand grabbed it from his hands and closed it again.

"Grab hers instead," he ordered a confused Foreman. "The connection could still be on. See if you can hear anything that might help us."

The other man fished for the discarded cell phone on the floor. Cameron's and House's eyes followed his every action as he held the phone to his hear and listen. "Nothing... the phone's dead."

House nodded. He had already figured as much, but wanted to be sure.

"In that case, there is no point in us calling anyone," he said, meeting their eyes in defiance. He knew they would not agree with his point of view.

"And what? Pretend it never happened?" Foreman fumed, growing angrier by the second. Between the threat on his life earlier and the possibility that Chase might have been hurt, or even killed, House's lack of reaction was pissing him off. "We need to do something!"

"House," Cameron, somewhat recovered from her initial shock, was staring at him, a different form of shock registering in her eyes. She couldn't believe that even House could remain nonchalant about this. "We need to help Chase… we have to call the police."

"A gunshot is a loud thing. I'm sure that in that whole street there's at least one neighbour that is not deaf and would have called the police by now, so don't worry about that. What we need to do," he said, "is use our heads."

"What are you talking about?" A still furious Foreman asked.

House ignored him and turned to Cameron instead.

"What did you heard, exactly?"

Cameron blinked, unsure of what he was talking about.

"Think! After the gunshot, did you hear him say anything else, a moan, a shout, a gasp, anything that may tell us if he was actually hit?"

"Have you completely lost your mind?" Foreman said, grabbing hold of House and violently turning him around. "Chase is in need of assistance NOW, not after you solve whatever puzzle there is on your head!"

The older man stood straighter, facing his angry fellow. Couldn't they use their own heads so that he wouldn't have to explain everything?

"A phone call doesn't end until one of the two people talking hangs up," he said, talking like he was addressing a particularly dumb audience.

"Cameron didn't end the call and if Chase had just dropped his phone, the call would still be connect, which means that his phone is dead, which means that whoever shot at him, 'killed' Chase's phone next, which means that someone stick around long enough to do so, which means that unless Chase was able to escape after the first shot, he's already dead... and no one you can call will fix that."

He knew that he was being blunt about this, but he couldn't allow for their feelings to interfere. If Chase was dead, there was nothing they could do about it and the police would take its time to find his killer.

But, if by any chance, Chase's fast reflexes had served him well for once in his pathetic life and he had managed to escape, then there was something they could do to help him.

Once he saw the flare ease up on Foreman's nostrils, House knew that the younger man was finally willing to listen.

"Kato came in here to kill our patient," he continued, referring to the dead Asian man, "and it is most likely that the phone-killers at the patient's home were Kato's friends. The bad news for Chase is that, from what we saw here, these are not the kind people to leave unfinished business behind. The police, once they get there, will be too busy looking around for guns and bullet holes instead of running wombats. They will have no idea that Chase was even there, unless they find his body."

"One more reason for us to call the police ourselves," Foreman pointed out, unwilling to cope with House's madness any more. "We have information that they need, and they will need it before getting there."

"Even if you tell them what you heard, they still will waste too much time inside the house. If Chase got away, then right now he's being hunted down by the shooters like a kangaroo on open season, with little time to spare on police mistakes!"

Cameron picked her cell phone again, her eyes filled with defiance. House's glare cut through her like a cold gush of wind.

"The more you talk, the more I'm convinced that we should be telling that to the police," she justified herself. "They can help him!"

House's hands flew in the air, in apparent defeat.

"Fine, we'll act all responsible and conscious and call the police," he agreed, his voice sounding barely sincere "once we're in the air."

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Foreman and Cameron hadn't been sure if they had actually heard it right or if they were having a bad hallucination inside what was turning out to be a very bad dream. They followed House anyway.

When they found themselves in Cuddy's office, listening to House's demand of a med-evac helicopter, they finally understood his cryptic words.

Lisa Cuddy had looked at the two of them and then around the room, probably looking for the guys from Candid Camera.

The words 'Chase' and 'gunshot' did wonders to make her realize that House wasn't making fun of her and that he actually had a good reason to make such insane request.

She never questioned what Chase was doing in that house in the first place, she never question why they had talked to her first instead of just calling the police. She just set in motion all of her resources and five minutes later House, Foreman and Cameron were flying above New Jersey.

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A total of fifteen minutes had gone by since Cameron's phone call. As doctors, they all knew that fifteen minutes was a life time when someone was hurt.

A person can bleed to death in less than one minute; a heart can go from healthy to complete stop in less than thirty seconds; the lungs shut down seconds after the heart stops; the brain starts to die the second after that happens. Fifteen minutes might as well be fifteen hours.

But they weren't flying to meet an injured person. They were flying on the mad hope that, like in a James Bond movie, the bad guy had really bad aim and that all that Chase would need from them was a lift.

For all of House's logical reasoning and certainty that Chase was still alive and running, Cameron couldn't shake the feeling inside her chest that told her that they were flying to meet a corpse.

Something in Chase's voice had been wrong when she had talked to him. Only now, that she had had a few minutes to think about, did she realized what it was. Chase had sounded stressed, scared.

Chase never sounded stressed.

Since the time she had started her fellowship with House, she had never seen Chase lose his coolness or temper. She had always believed that his calmness and apparent inability to stress were nothing but apathy, a direct result of the fact that he just didn't care. Nothing but a trait of his personality that he couldn't help or mend.

With time, she learned that he had an ability that she lacked, an ability that she envied in him: the ability to close down his emotions and just stop feeling, a switch, turning his heart on and off.

She'd witnessed plenty of times the moments when his switch had been off. She now whished that he had let them witness the other moments too, the moments when he allowed himself to feel.

"We're here," the pilot's deep voice sounded inside her helmet. "I believe there's enough room for me to land in the street."

Cameron and Foreman looked down. Several feet bellow them, the suburb' street looked like a sideways Christmas tree. The police's blue and red lights blinked out of rhythm with the blue and white lights from the ambulance, creating a colourful atmosphere that looked almost festive.

"They were fast," they heard Foreman's whispered words. He sounded surprised.

"Circle around a bit. There's something I need to see first," House's voice sounded odd coming from the intercoms in their helmets.

Amidst the circus of lights down there, House had spotted Chase' silver car, parked a few feet away from the patient's house. If he was running, he was running on foot.

"Keep an eye opened for marsupials," he warned the two other doctors seated in the back, knowing that they would understand his off the hand phrasing.

Beside him, the pilot threw him a curious look.

"It's matting season," he explained, doing nothing to convince the confused pilot of his sanity, or lack of.

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The pilot soon realized that this wasn't an ordinary rescue mission. There was plenty of help down there and from the reactions of the people seated in his helicopter, the would-be-rescued wasn't where he was supposed to be.

He circled the neighbourhood a few times, expanding the circumference of his passes each time. When his fuel tank started to near dangerously low limits, he called the urban search off, allowing them to choose to go back with him or be left there.

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To the people living in that particular street, most of them retired men and women, this day was going down as the most exciting they had witnessed in a long time.

Between the gunshots from what they were now referring as the Asian gang; the police's arrival and questioning; and the landing of a medical helicopter right in the middle of their street, most believed that living there was proving to be better than going to the movies.

Some of them were taking pictures, because no one would believe them otherwise.

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House had hopped for a discrete arrival, but he figured that even small as the med-evacs usually were, a helicopter is still a helicopter and there was no way the pilot could've landed his ride in a more inconspicuous way.

Although the pilot had taken care in to not landing too near of what was clearly now a crime scene, two men dressed in dark, loose fitting suits, had parted from the main group to meet them. Once they were out of the helicopter, they weren't allowed to advance any further.

"Mind telling us what you're doing here?" One of the men, the shorter one, with a bad cropped red hair, asked them as soon as they were within hearing range. "No one called for a med-evac."

"A colleague of ours was near here and alerted us to the shooting," Foreman replied smoothly, masking the half lie in a half truth. "We were supposed to meet him here."

The policemen eyed him suspiciously, but their sharp looks had nothing on all the others that Foreman had already faced earlier in his life. He looked back at them, daring either man to call out his bluff.

"That wouldn't happen to be his car, would it?" The other man, a Latino in his early forties, asked, pointing at the silver abandoned car. "The card in the dashboard says it belongs to a doctor."

"Robert Chase," House provided the name, knowing full well that by now the police had already run a check on the license plate and were well aware of the owner's name.

The two men exchange a knowing look, confirming House' suspicion that they were indeed fishing for information. Now he just needed to know if he still had an intensivist on his team. "You wouldn't have happened to see him, have you?"

Cameron and Foreman were watching the exchange from the side lines as both sides tried to pry for details without asking for them. Now would have been a good time to come out clean on what they knew and just spare themselves the trouble of a police investigation on the causes of their pathologic need to lie. They kept silent.

"Come with me," the shorter one, who seemed to be in charge, said to House. His tone made it clear that it was neither a suggestion nor a request. "You two wait here," he stopped Cameron and Foremen as soon as they took a step to follow House, "This won't take long".

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Foreman was trying hard to avoid Cameron's eyes. He assumed that House had been called apart to identify Chase's body and he knew that the second Cameron looked at him, she would see that certainty in his face.

He couldn't say that he particularly liked the Australian doctor, but they had worked together for over two years now. It was impossible to not develop some sort of feelings. He just wasn't sure what sort of feelings they were.

On one hand, and despite his comments of Chase being a loose mouth, Foreman knew that he was a person with whom you could talk too and be certain that no one would ever know about it.

His father had dragged him to confession a couple of times when he was very young. Talking to Chase felt a bit like talking to the priest then.

On the other hand, Chase was an annoying man who had everything in his life handed over on a sliver plate since he was born, while Foreman had had to fight teeth and nails for everything he'd ever achieved. The fact that they had both reached an equivalent level of professional success didn't seemed fair to the neurologist.

But they worked together; they spent night after night without sleep watching over patients together; they even drank together occasionally. They didn't exactly bond, but a connection had been made between the two of them.

Foreman couldn't be cold enough to not feel anything when faced with the other man's demise. Especially when it could've as easily have been him or Cameron's dead body that House was walking to now.

A hidden portion of his mind, the portion where he'd store all of the survival instincts developed as he grew up, a shameful portion of him, was relieved that it had been Chase and not him.

It was a thought that left him feeling guilty; a guilt that he knew would bring him nightmares about this day long after this was all over. But being alive meant protecting your own skin, and those instincts could never be denied.

Last time, it had been him who had almost died because House had sent him to poke his nose where it shouldn't be poking. This time, the attacker hadn't been invisible. This time, one of them had finally paid the price.

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House was curious about the policeman's reasoning to take him in to a crime scene. Even thought Foreman's clear experience and ease with lying to the police had served them right, House could tell that this particular policeman was a bit smarter than the ones that his delinquent neurologist was used lying to.

He hadn't entirely bought their fabricated story to be there, but he hadn't called them on it either. Yet.

Instead, the man walked silently in front of him, like a cheerleader on a two men parade, without the cheering part.

Around them, the rest of the police team was still busy storing little things inside transparent plastic bags, taking pictures and circling things with yellow tape.

The house had the lights on but the police had brought brighter lights inside, positioning them like a professional photographer would before a shooting session.

There were broken pieces of glass and pottery on the floor, papers wrinkled and shredded, lying messily around. It would look like any other abandoned and vandalized place, if it weren't for the clean walls and the sense of freshness that seemed to emanate from the debris.

In a corner of House' sharp mind, he knew that the most probable reason for the policeman to drag a crippled man in to the middle of that mess was to show him a dead body.

They had passed by the ambulance, its doors opened wide and the paramedics leaning against it, enjoying a smoke and looking relaxed. They had no broken bodies to mend, but that didn't mean anything, because no one could mend death.

He hadn't seen the coroner's car when they'd flew in and he couldn't see it now either, but that didn't meant that it couldn't be on its way.

A part of him was curious to know how he would react if it was in fact Chase's body that he was being led to see.

People tend to look different when they're dead. It's not just the obvious lack of breathe and colour on their cheeks. Something about the amount of space that they occupy inside a room changes too.

They become the big pink elephant in the room, the 'thing' that everyone knows its there but no one wants to talk about. The piece of meat that, because its no longer able to draw breathe, is now worthy of more respect and even thought it can't hear anymore, everyone whispers around, afraid to disturb its unending sleep.

Would he respect Chase more by seeing his dead body? Was he heading to some sort of epiphany about his feelings towards the young man?

It wasn't a dead body that the policeman wanted to show him.

Near the end of the stair' steps was what was left of a cell phone, broken parts of plastic casing looking more like melted black wax than a piece of expensive technology.

Chase's cell phone.

The fact that there were dark stains on the floor next to it looking suspiciously like wet blood, and the fact that those stains were too large to be a simple nose bleed, added a bit more drama to the whole scenario than the broken phone ever could, but House figure that that had been the policeman's point.

"So, your story is that your guy was just walking by and heard the shots, right?" The policeman asked, his voice not hiding the little faith he had on the truthfulness of that statement. "Which means that when we recover that phone's card and run a check on the phones numbers inside, we won't find yours there, right?"

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	4. Chapter 4

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CHAPTER IV

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When he was eight, Chase's father had taken him to Tokyo.

Rowan Chase had been invited to give a presentation in some prestigious congress about rheumatology that he attended every year. That year he had decided that his son was old enough to go along, because the boy had never been to Japan.

It had been spring then, and springtime in Japan meant sakura, the cherry blossoms. The small and delicate white flowers, managing to look at the same time fragile and imposing, escaped the boundaries of the parks where they grew and wondered in to the busy streets.

Robert remembered that it was just like watching snow fall down, only it wasn't cold.

Even surrounded by the tallest of buildings, the big Japanese city had managed to retain a sort of balance that gave it both a grace and beauty that Robert couldn't find in the big cities of his own country. Two hours after arriving there, he'd already fallen in love with the country.

Even though most of the buildings lining the streets of Tokyo had left Robert mesmerized, he had loved the fact that there had been at least one garden or a large park every couple of streets. The green was as much part of the city as were the concrete and glass, a constant reminder for those living and working inside those tall buildings that there was a whole world outside their jobs and busy lives.

It was a good reminder, one that an eight year old Robert whished his father could understand.

Busy with his schedule at the congress, Rowan Chase had pretty much left his son free to wander around the hotel where they were staying, with a firm warning not to venture in to the street alone.

Robert, too bored to stay in the room and watch TV in a language that he couldn't understand, had aimlessly navigated the corridors and lobbies of the hotel until he found himself in the service area. The aromatic smell of exotic food had led him straight to the kitchen.

It was nearing lunch time, and the place was pulsing with organized activity. It took awhile for the busy workers to notice the small, occidental boy, quietly observing them.

They didn't spoke English that well, but they had let him stay around for a bit, amused by the fascinated look the boy had on his face as he watched the expert hands of the main chef manoeuvring his sharp knife, cutting fish and sea weeds in to precise forms and shapes.

It didn't look like food, it looked more like art.

It seemed like an incredible hard thing to do and Robert was amazed at the speed in which the chef worked, his hands never wavering, never doubting the accuracy of his cut. Like a surgeon.

At eight, he thought that preparing sushi looked a lot cooler than watching his dad working around books and petri dishes.

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It was the smell that woke him up. It smelled of fish and spices, like the kitchen in that hotel in Tokyo had smelled.

Or maybe it was the man shouting at him that had woken him up.

Chase couldn't really tell. What he could tell was that he felt numb all over, like he'd fallen asleep in a bad position. Only he wasn't. And he hadn't.

He was lying on his back, on the floor, arms extended by his side, positioned. Unnatural.

The floor underneath him didn't felt like Thomas house anymore. He remembered landing on top of broken glass. The ground beneath him was smooth and smelt of fish and wood. He had been moved somewhere.

There was an unpleasant sense of violation that came with the knowledge of having been carried around unconscious by strangers. Outlaw strangers at that.

The memories of what had happen assaulted him a second later, coming abruptly and uninvited, one after the other, sequences of moments that he really rather forget.

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He'd been talking to Cameron on the phone, walking towards the front door of Thomas' house, when he had heard the gunshot.

In theory, Chase knew that the only thing faster than the speed of sound was the speed of light. Bullets being fired from a gun didn't even made it to the top five.

In practice, he could've sworn that the two had travelled at the same damn speed, because he had felt the impact as soon as he heard the sound.

The phone dropped from his hand more out of surprise than pain, as his left leg seemed to turn in to jelly and gave out on him.

Chase tried to remain up, holding on to the wall, unable to see who had fired the gun, unable to escape the path of more bullets.

From the floor, he could still hear Cameron's disembodied voice, calling his name. She sounded scared.

Chase forced himself to look at his leg, finding mesmerizing the rapidly spreading red stain just above his knee. Blood. His blood.

He figured he should be stopping it, but couldn't bring himself to let go of the wall.

If it didn't hurt and he was still standing, Chase could fool himself in to believing that it wasn't all that bad.

Only he couldn't fool himself. He was a doctor.

He knew that the reason why he wasn't in pain yet was because of all the adrenaline running through his body. He also knew that adrenaline highs didn't last long.

Chase lost his battle with gravity as soon as the pain hit him. It felt like fire, tearing apart the muscle in his leg.

He must've closed his eyes, because the next thing he saw was the ceiling of Thomas house and an angry asian man, standing above him with a gun in his hands.

Chase closed his eyes. If this was the end, the angry face of his own murderer was not the last thing that he wanted to see.

A second shot broke through the silent house and Chase briefly wondered if the killer had missed. When his head exploded in pain, his last thought had been that no, he hadn't.

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The man was still shouting.

Chase opened his eyes and realized that the man wasn't shouting at him after all.

The ceiling was grey, without the wooden supports that he remembered from Thomas' house.

The voice was coming from the left, where he could see the top of a flight of stairs that led to a single door.

There was a lit lamp on the ceiling by the end of the stairs, providing a weak illumination; the bulb was dangling, like it had been hit recently, and the dancing light was making him feel dizzy.

Beneath it, Chase could see two men arguing. Or one man shouting and another pretend to listen.

The one doing all the shouting had an apron with red stains wrapped around his waist, and kept pointing directly at him.

The other was taller, built like a wrestling fighter, dressed in a business suit that seemed a size too small for him. He looked more bored than sympathetic with the smaller man's protests.

It took Chase a while to figure that they were arguing in Japanese. It took him a while longer to remember that he had tried to learn the language when he was younger and that if pushed, he could still understand a bit of it.

However, the man was talking too fast and his head was pounding too hard for him to make any sense of their words. He gave up.

If this was some sort of illegal organs operation, he didn't want to know which part of him they wanted to cut.

With more effort than he remember being necessary, Chase raised his right hand to gingerly touch his right temple. There was a dull ache there and his fingers came back wet and sticky.

He couldn't tell if the wound was a result of the second shot or something else. Either way, it was academic. His head hurt because they had cracked his skull open.

Feeling the pain in his head, Chase briefly wondered why the pain in his leg was nothing more than a throbbing ache, when it should've been hurting like a bitch. He wanted to look at it, but the idea of raising his head from the floor seemed like an impossible task right now, and he had to admit that, if he didn't move at all, he felt pretty good.

The two men had stopped talking the second they saw him move.

The bigger man spoke two short words to the other, who didn't seemed all that happy with it, but left in a hurry anyway.

Chase tried to seat up when he saw that the big guy had remained downstairs and was nearing him with a disturbing smile on his lips. There wasn't much that Chase could do, but he figured that he would feel a little less vulnerable seating up than lying down.

As it turned out, his arms left him little choice in the matter, as they refused to bear his weight and collapse under him when he tried to rise. He felt pathetic, wiggling on the floor like a small kid.

The other man stood above him, silently observing his struggles like a scientist watching his experiment.

If the situation wasn't disturbing by itself, having the impassive face of a Japanese man who was built like a sumo wrestler staring at him, certainly was.

"Look, I don't know what you wa…aaah!" Chase tried to reason, but his words turned in to a yelp when he felt the bulky man's hands grabbing his arms. His heart was beating wildly against his chest as Chase wondered how much damage he could do to the other man if he was forced to defend himself. With his body feeling partly numb, he figured not much. The idea left him terrified.

The japanese man chuckled as he sensed the other man's fright over being held, but said nothing as he lifted the injured man up and dragged him to seat against the nearest wall, adjusting his arms and legs like he was nothing but an oversized dummy.

Chase didn't had time to feel relieved, as he felt the bile rising in his throat, his body rebelling against having been moved. He managed to turn his head to the side just in time to avoid barfing all over Big Guy's shoes.

He hit a wooden box instead. The place seemed to be filed with them, he notice only now, some just seating on the floor, others pilled up in shelves that went from the ground almost to the ceiling. A storage room, he figured. How cliché.

He squinted, trying to read the labels on the side, not because he thought that he would be able to understand the complicated Asian scribbling, but because he needed something else to focus other than the churning in his stomach.

"Mr. Kuong will not be pleased when he finds his supplies drowning in your vomit, Doctor Chase," a man's voice interrupted his concentration.

Chase looked up to find another man standing next to Big Guy. He hadn't even heard him come down the stairs.

From the perfect American accent, Chase was expecting to find a western guy, but he was wrong. It wasn't Apron Guy, but like the other two, this man too looked Japanese and like Big Guy, he was wearing a suit. His however, looked tailor made, expensive, fitting him like a second skin.

It took him a long time to realize that the man had called him by name. The answer to his puzzled look landed on his lap before he could voice it.

His grinning face was staring back at him from his driver's license, inside his opened wallet. He couldn't remember what had possessed him at he time to grin like a fool when his picture was being taken.

He tilted his head back, staring at the man. Who was Mr. Kuong anyway?

"We know who you are, where you live and where you work," Nice Suit told him, sounding unimpressed with the knowledge. "What we want to know now is where is it hidden."

Chase blinked, not sure if the man was asking a question or just chatting up with him.

It was starting to scare him the way in which his sluggish brain struggled to understand what was happening to him and to process simple things like his own wallet. Was he concussed? He certainly felt dizzy and nauseous enough to be. Maybe it was blood loss... why hadn't he noticed before that someone had wrapped a crude bandage around his left thigh?

"Focus, Doctor Chase. We need an answer."

'Ah, so it had been a question' Chase concluded. The 'Ah so' in his mind brought a giggle to his lips. He'd watched too many martial arts' movies in his childhood.

The situation was anything but giggle-worthy, but he was coming to realize that his concussed brain was less than effective in censuring dumb things before they reached his mouth. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he confessed, hoping that they hadn't noticed the giggle.

Weren't his organs that they wanted? Chase wasn't sure if he should be glad or scared to discover that, because if it wasn't that, then he didn't want to imagine what it might be. Imagination can be a frightening thing, especially when you're scared.

"Trust me, you don't want to play the clueless card with me," Nice Suit said, sounding less pleasant now. "There was a reason for you to be in Thomas Joyce's house and we both know what that reason was. Now, you have a choice between maintaining this matter on cordial grounds by answering me, or we can start to be unpleasant towards one another."

Chase wondered if this was really happening. Had he really heard what he thought he'd just heard?

House had commented that, after being shot, he had experience some wild hallucinations, involving exploding genitals and spilled guts. He'd gushed about ketamine being better than LSD, but given that it was House, Chase had thought that he was just pulling their collective legs.

Now he had his doubts about House's honesty, because he could've sworn that he was hallucinating too.

There were too many things in this whole situation that made no sense to him, like why wasn't he in excruciating pain, why did these guys went to the trouble of kidnapping him instead of just killing him and why the crap was this guy acting like he was a spy caught behind enemy lines?

"I have no idea what reason you think I had to be there, but I can tell you mine," Chase started, figuring that, hallucination or not, he was sure that he didn't want Nice Suit to become unpleasant with him, specially if that involved Big Guy in any way. "Thomas Joyce is a patient at the hospital where I work. He couldn't remember the names of his previous prescriptions, so he asked me to go to his home to get them."

There was no point in telling them that he'd never even seen the man, or that Thomas hadn't exactly asked for anything. They didn't need to know that he had been breaking the law at the same time they were.

"You expect me to believe that you went all the way from Princeton Plainsboro to Thomas' house, just because he asked you to? A perfect stranger asks you to go fetch, and you obey?"

Chase' shoulders sagged. Phrased like that, it really did seem kind of lame.

"You are not a very good liar," Nice Suit said, acting like they were long lost friends. "You do realize what I have to do next, don't you?"

Chase's brain might have been slow, but his treacherous imagination was running wild, feeding him violent images that went from CNN's reports of tortured prisoners to Discovery Channel's documentaries about medieval devices. He swallowed the saliva that was threatening to choke him. "Let me go?" He asked lamely.

The minute the words left his mouth, Chase regretted ever having spoken them.

This had to be a hallucination, because never in his whole life would he try to be funny in the face of his soon-to-be-torturers.

"Look, this is all one giant misunderstanding," Chase tried again. "You obviously have the wrong person and no amount of 'persuasion' will ever change that. Trust me, if I had the slightest idea about what you want to know, I would tell you."

The argument was nothing but pure honesty and it sounded compelling, or at least it did to Chase's ears. The man staring down at him didn't seem impressed.

"I guess we will find out the amount of persuasion it will be necessary then," the Japanese man said matter of factly as he looked at his watch.

Chase would've crawled inside the wall if the solid concrete behind him allowed. If this was a hallucination, he wanted out now.

"So, is this the part where you tell me what sort of…" he cleared his dry throat, looking for a word less frightening than torture, "… strategy will be used to force me to tell you what I don't know?"

If there was one thing that Chase hated about himself was the way he talked too much when he was nervous or scared. He figured that since he was both right now, the blabbing would be twice as bad.

The man standing above him, menacing and imposing in his stance, smiled condescendingly. "Western heads… so filled with nonsense that they miss the obvious," he said to no one in particular, although it was obvious about whom he was talking. "Do you think we would actually torture you, Doctor Chase?"

Chase felt his face redden, angry at himself for feeling embarrassed at all.

Nice Suit turned to Big Guy, who was still standing silently beside him, searching for support.

"We're not barbarians," the man said, managing to sound offended. "We're Japanese, we are patient people."

And then his gaze was back at Chase, analysing him like he was a bug under the microscope. "The morphine we so kindly gave you half an hour ago should be wearing off in about ten minutes… I'll be back in thirty."

Although he struggled to keep any reaction from showing in his face, Chase's eyes revealed his surprise, quickly followed by the dreaded realization of what the other man was saying.

What he had blamed on a possible concussion and blood loss were actually symptoms of the morphine high he'd been ridding. And the ride was coming to an end.

Nice Suit was right. If they believed that whatever they wanted to know could be squeezed out of him through pain, they didn't need to lay a finger on him.

Chase had treated enough gunshot wounds to know how much they hurt. Between the torn tissue and the almost certain infection, when left untreated, bullets were not nice on the human body. It usually took the strongest of pain killers worked to bring some sort of relive to those patients.

Five minutes after the morphine running through his vessels wore off, Chase knew he would be begging them to tell everything. Even what he didn't know.

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	5. Chapter 5

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CHAPTER V

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"And the police let you all go, just like that?" An incredulous Wilson asked House.

The other man was leaning against the partition that divided the balconies between his and Wilson's office. He shrugged his shoulders, instantly dismissing as irrelevant the hours that they had spent in detective Bree's office, getting their ears chewed. "Foreman's previous record did seem to get them a little tiff, but it wasn't like the rest of us had been breaking the law or anything," he explained, pausing only long enough to swallow the Vicodin pill that he'd popped in to is mouth.

"You kept vital information from the police," the oncologist reminded him. "And you sent an employee of yours to illegally enter a patient's home… again!"

Word that House and two thirds of his staff had flown away from the PPTH's roof in a hurry had eventually reached Wilson's ears. With his curiosity spiked by such an uncommon event, Wilson had decided to waste no time with the rumour mill and had gone straight to Cuddy.

The tale she told had left him dumbstruck and even more curious, not to mention worried. He had to wait the rest of the afternoon before House was back so that he could squeeze the whole deal out of the older man.

"Cuddy called to warn them," House justified himself. "Besides, once they learned that we had the house's owner as a patient here, they decided to play nice with us and close an eye to the braking'n'entering thingy."

"Really?" Wilson asked surprised. Despite the fact that Chase was missing and probably injured, those events had occurred while he was breaking the law himself. It seemed highly unusual on the police part to completely disregard the matter. "No questions asked?"

"It's the police... of course they asked questions," House, sounding like he was talking to a five year old. "But turns out that most of the questions that they wanted answered can only be provided either by the amazing-disappearing-doctor or by the sleeping not-so-beauty that's hooked up to a ventilator upstairs."

House saw no point in sharing with Wilson the second phone call that Cuddy was forced to make in order to smooth the police's ruffled feathers. Or her promise that all of PPTH's resources were available to them, including the labs and personnel. It wasn't exactly bribery, but it came pretty close.

Wilson could only nod at House's words. He had also heard about the attempted assassination that House's new patient had been a victim of, earlier that morning. It was clear to see that the two events were connected, but he couldn't think of a single reason for Chase being kidnapped, other than having the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The silence stretched between the two men, rhythmically broken by House's cane, tapping against the floor.

The sun was beginning to set; its bright orange tones turning the balcony's view of the city bellow in to a sepia tone that somehow made the whole landscape look old and worn.

Wilson watched his friend, noticing the marked lines around his eyes and the way his forehead wrinkled in deep thought. He knew those signs well. "You shouldn't blame yourself."

For one fleeting moment, when he looked up to stare in annoyance, Wilson was able to see the real emotions in House's eyes. He was blaming himself for what had happened, and he was worried about Chase.

But then, just as quickly, the look was gone, replaced by the detached front that House played so well.

"What blame in particular are you referring to? Romans killing Christians in the arena; Nazis killing Jews in concentration camps… I'm neither, wasn't even there," House defended, raising his hand to prove his honesty. "Now, if you're talking about those fifty bucks that mysteriously disappeared from your wallet…"

"I'm talking about Chase," Wilson interrupted him, knowing that the other man could stall the conversation the whole night, if necessary.

"So was I!"

"House… you and I both know that you won't be able to just seat tight and do nothing about this…"

"So this is where I drop my scruffy limp-doctor alter ego and change in to my blue spandex suite and red cape?"

Wilson stared at him, waiting for the sarcasm to dry out. He knew that, with patience enough, it was possible to talk seriously with House. It was one of House's most annoying defence mechanisms, but fortunately for Wilson, it was one that, he knew, would burn fast. He didn't have to wait long.

"The police didn't sounded overly confident about finding Chase… they seem to believe that the fastest way to find the missing wombat is through sleeping not-so-beauty," House said, looking at the tip of his cane, as it drew patterns on the balcony's floor.

"But he's unconscious," Wilson noted, mentally reminding himself to find out the patient's real name. "Possibly brain damaged… how do you wake up a brain damaged sleeping beauty?"

House had a mischievously look in his eyes when he looked up. "Easy… You get a neurologist to kiss him."

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"House is insane," Foreman said for the third time in as many hours.

After being drilled by the police, for the second time on that day, Foreman was more than ready to hang his metaphorical gloves and call it a day. House, however, had decided that they would be going back to PPTH and resume their work on Thomas' case.

Never mind the fact that the patient was stable for now and would, more than likely, remain stable until the next morning; never mind the fact that their concentration was all over the place because of the day's events; never mind the fact that, unlike House, Foreman and Cameron were more concern about Chase than they were about Thomas.

House still dragged them back to the hospital and had them running tests well in to the night.

"Because he wants us to work on Thomas instead of spending our time worrying about Chase?" Cameron offered, as they both sat in the glass box that separated them from the MRI room.

Thomas' legs and feet were the only parts of the man that they could see in flesh. All the rest, they were looking in the black and grey tones of the MRI world.

"No, because he thinks that there is the slightest chance of this guy waking up, be coherent about anything any time soon and magically tells us what happened to Chase," he specified, hitting the save button on the keyboard with more force than it was necessary.

He really wanted to go home, pour himself a good dose of scotch and just forget that this day had ever happened. "He's just trying to delay having to deal with the inevitable."

Maybe he'd forgotten who he was talking too, or maybe he was just too tired to pretend anymore. Either way, he could tell the exact moment when Cameron processed his words for what they were. Her shock was a vivid and solid thing that took form and grew between the two of them until there was no more room to breathe.

"Chase could still be alive," she said, sounding offended by his lack of hope, "and for all we know, Thomas might actually have an idea about where he might be."

Foreman sighed, looking intently at the computer screen. "There's no damaged tissue, no swelling, no obstructed vessels... whatever caused his collapse, didn't came from his brain," he said, ending the exam.

The giant machine's booming noise stopped in the room beyond them and in the following void of sound, Foreman could still feel Cameron's eyes digging holes in his head, waiting for his retort.

He knew that she would not let this go with an easy change of topic.

He turned in his chair, finally facing her aggravated gaze. "Look, you'll have to face the reality sooner or later," he said, as softly as he could manage. "For all we know, Chase is bleeding, from a wound whose seriousness we have no idea about; in the hands of a group of people that, by the looks of it, belong to the asian organized crime; we have no idea why they took him or where they took him, or even if they took him at all; this guy," he said, pointing to an unconscious Thomas that was already been taken back to the ICU, "even if he wakes up, will most likely be unable to pull the rabbit out of the hat that everyone is expecting him to pull. I'm not saying that I'm not rooting for Chase to be alright, I'm just saying that his odds suck."

Cameron looked down, her eyes watering all over again. The last couple of hours she couldn't seem to stop herself from having that reaction over and over again.

Hope was a good thing, it kept people fighting and surviving day after day, it had kept her husband near her for more days than any of his doctors had ever predicted, it had kept her going. Why were all around her so suspicious and distrusting of hope?

Was it so wrong of her to hope that Chase was still alive and would return to them?

Deep inside, she knew Foreman was right. But what was worse, to mourn a colleague before knowing for sure that he was dead, to suffer and later discover that he was ok after all; or to cling to a daring hope that he would be ok, and, if worse came to worse, mourn him when proved wrong?

She couldn't say. But she couldn't let go of her hope either.

"Let's get the results back to House," she said instead, hastily cleaning the tear tracks from her face.

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"Any news?" Foreman asked as soon as they entered House's office.

He knew that, despite everything, House would've paged them if there had been any development in Chase's situation. On the safe side, however, it did no harm to ask.

The older man was seating behind his desk, feet propped on the desk's top, his attention focused on the small TV to the right of it. "Patrick and Robin were doing it in the kitchen table and were caught by the maid, and Jason is about to get waxed by the mob," House promptly replied, spluttering random facts about General Hospital even though it was clear that he was watching the news.

"I'll take that as a no," Foreman replied, stopping himself from rolling his eyes as he leaned against the wall.

"Police work is hard and strenuous, unlike yours," House offered, turning the TV set off with the tip of his cane. "What you got for me?"

"Brain MRI was clean," Foreman said, holding the transparent negatives against the ceiling light. "Apart from some scarring from an old head injury, there seems to be no ischemic areas."

"So, the brain is still ticking," House concluded with true happiness. He reached for the papers in Cameron's hands. "What else?"

Cameron handed him the lab results. "Blood work's normal, except for his myoglobin and troponin levels, which are slightly off, the same as his histamines levels," she resumed the results. "He had a pulmonary allergic reaction to something, and the fact of being almost choked to death, didn't help his already compromised respiratory system."

"The myoglobin and troponin levels might be elevated because of the oxygen depravation he was subject to… his EKG was normal, so I doubt he had a full stroke, probably just some myocardium distress," Foreman figured. "Either way, it's there because of what happened to him here, not because of what caused him to be here."

"So, he had a stroke," House said, abandoning the lab results and grabbing his red and grey rubber ball instead, "but we can't prove it, and he has hay fever, but we don't know what triggered it."

"We don't know that," Cameron replied, ticked by their hasted conclusions. "Because he wasn't complaining from chest pain and his EKG was normal when he arrived, the ER never asked for cardiac markers in the first place. Those values might have been altered then too."

Foreman nodded thoughtfully, conceding to her point.

"And hay fever is usually associated with haying season, which autumn isn't," she continued, turning to House and his bouncing ball.

"But spring is," House counter pointed without looking at her, as he threw the ball in to the air.

"Spring ended a lot of months ago," Foreman pointed out the obvious, wondering if House had lost track of two entire seasons.

"Spring is whenever a Man wants," the older doctor said philosophically. "And it's the season they're at in the southern hemisphere of this planet," he added, looking pointedly at his two fellows.

"And Thomas arrived yesterday from Japan," Cameron concluded, seeing the logic in House's train of thought.

"We'll start him on an iv drip of fexofenadine and furosemide, to normalize his allergic reaction and keep his lungs from drowning in the mean time," Foreman told as he looked at the patient's chart.

"How compromised is his respiratory system?" House asked.

"If he responds well to the treatment, we'll probably be able to get him out of the ventilator sometime tomorrow."

"Good... add some nitro to that cocktail and you," House said, pointing to a seated Cameron, "go stick a catheter in to his heart coronaries. One of them is responsible for his altered enzymes, and I want to know which."

"Does this mean that I'm free to do home?" Foreman asked once Cameron was gone. It was a long shot, but maybe House would feel a bit magnanimous today.

"No... I need your special skills for some translation work," House said as he left his office and moved to the adjoining conference room.

Foreman followed, noticing that the white board was considerably more filled than what he last remembered.

House had been busy while they had been performing their tests. The board was now vertically divided in half. On one side, Thomas' earlier symptoms; on the other he could read a new line of what looked like random facts.

"Long range shot, .40 hollow point bullet, moderate bleeding, wall blood splatter two and a half feet," Foreman read out loud, scrunching his eyebrows in confusion. "We're diagnosing a crime scene now?"

House didn't answer him, instead tossing him a yellow covered file.

Foreman caught it in mid flight. The front page had NJPD written in large black letters. "Is this what I think it is?" He asked surprised, not wanting to believe that House would go as far as steal a police report. "You can go to jail for stealing this!"

"Not curious?" House tempted him. "Besides, I didn't steal it, I had it copied."

Foreman didn't waste anytime discussing semantics with the other man as he quickly flipped through the report's pages. "How did you get your on hands on this?" He asked, sounding impressed by the other man' skills.

"Connections," was House only reply.

"They managed to dug the bullet that wrecked the cell phone from the floor... confirmed that the blood found was Chase's," Foreman mumbled as he quickly read through the file. "How did they managed to prove that this fast?" He asked, knowing that DNA sequencing usually took a while, especially in a busy police lab.

House was adding the new findings to Thomas side of the board. "Cuddy insisted that they used ours labs for that and put a rush on things," he said without pausing in his writing. "Apparently, they're being nice to us by letting us do their job for them."

House waited as patiently as he could until the neurologist finished reading the report. He'd already read it twice, memorizing the important facts. What he needed now was to know what wasn't written there.

Most of the stuff, he could try googling for it, but given that he had an expert on the matter as part of his staff, he saw no point in that. "So, doctor bullet, care to translate what that file says to the rest of us who don't talk cop's lingo?"

Foreman tried to pierce the other man with his annoyed gaze, but gave up. He'd dug that hole all on his own, when he'd demonstrated that his knowledge of guns and cops was a little above average. "What do you want to know?"

House looked at the other man, his eyes allowing the concern to surface for a micro second. "I want to know, based on what's written in that report, what sort of wound are we talking about," he answered. "I want a timeline."

Foreman looked at the other man, pondering how serious he was about this. "You want a prognosis on a wound that we can't see?"

House nodded, acting like it was the most common thing on the face of the Earth. "Too much for you?"

The neurologist sighed, wondering why House still managed to surprise him. He took the challenge for what it was, putting little faith in the accuracy of it.

It was like predicting the result of a game when the only thing you knew was that it involved a field and two random teams. "A .40 bullet it's like the new 9 mm; same punch, but more damage," he started thinking out loud, moving closer to the board. "The fact that it was a long range shot tells us two things: that the entry wound is probably small, but the damage inside is severer."

Seeing the rare confused look in House's face, Foreman explained, "A hallow point is designed to mushroom after hitting the target, slowing its progress but causing more damage along the way. Fired from a certain distance, it generally causes an entry wound about the same diameter as its calibre, in this case, .40."

"And the exit wound?" House enquired, knowing full well that those tended to be worse.

Foreman looked at the file again. "How tall is Chase?"

House thought about it for a bit, his left hand rising about the height that he was used to see Chase. "About this big?"

"Around six then, give it or take," Foreman guessed. "The police found a blood splatter two and half feet high on the wall," he said, bending over and measuring about that height against himself. "Assuming that Chase was standing up when he was hit, I would guess that he was hit on his leg, probably above his knee. Judging by the diameter of his thigh, I don't think the bullet managed to get out, so no, no exit wound."

When he looked back up, Foreman caught House just staring at him, a smile on his face. "What?"

The other man just shrugged. "I still thing that you knowing all of this stuff is just soooo cool," he sing sang.

"You asked for it," Foreman defended, thinking that the older doctor was just making fun of him.

"Unclench," House semi-ordered. What was it with his employees that he couldn't compliment them? "So, given your brilliant exposure, you would say Chase has a total of what… twelve hours of healthy life?"

Foreman's lips twisted in to a pained smirk. Chase had stopped being healthy the second he was shot, but he figured he knew what House was getting at. "Assuming that no major artery was hit; assuming that he didn't go in to shock; assuming that the bullet didn't cause a complicated femur fracture and assuming that the bleeding stopped on itself before he lost too much blood, yeah, I think ten to twelve hours is a good estimation."

House just nodded, already lost in his own thoughts. He absent minded rubbed his right thigh before fishing for his Vicodin bottle.

"You know this is a waste of time, don't you?" Foreman's voice intruded in his pre-oblivion universe. "The whole 'when you assume, you become a pain in the ass to me' philosophy?"

House looked at him with something akin to anger in his eyes, probably for having his own words thrown back to him, but didn't answer. "Go help Cameron," he said instead, turning his back on the other man.

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	6. Chapter 6

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CHAPTER VI

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The metal stairs cringed, protesting against the weight, as Big Guy followed Nice Suit out of the storage room. Big Guy looked back one last time. His disturbing smile, that seemed to be permanent on his face, was the last thing that Chase was able to see before the lamp was switched off.

In a room with no windows and with a tight sealed door, the absence of a lit lamp plunged the entire division in to a thick darkness, one that seemed to turn even air black.

Total darkness always seemed to have a way to seep in to your mind and make you wonder if you're still awake, make you doubt if your eyes are still open or of if they closed without asking for your consent.

Total darkness made space shrink, close around you like you had nothing but a little box in which to move safely. It makes the air that you breathe feel heavy and contaminated. It made time crawl lazily, swirling around you aimlessly because it had no where to go.

As soon as the door closed with the resounding sound of a heavy bolt being locked in to place, Chase's first thought was that he needed to switch that light back on.

With his mind barely managing to process the insanity of what was happening to him, the simple idea of seating in the dark, waiting for pain to hit, seemed unbearable. The proverbial straw that would break the camel's back.

His attempts to get up were met with as much success as previously. Alone in the dark storage room, Chase swore with all his might, frustrated with his body's betrayal.

The last time he had felt this helpless, he had been sixteen, standing at the door frame of his mother's bedroom, watching the paramedics trying and failing to bring her back to life. He had hated the feeling then; he wasn't warming up to it now either.

Chase gingerly grabbed his left leg with both hands, carefully bending the knee and slightly raising his throbbing thigh, in hopes to slow down the escalating pain.

The left leg of the jeans that he was wearing felt moist and slightly stiff from the back pocket to calf. An image of the red stain growing in his pants flashed before Chase's eyes. He closed his eyelids against it, even though he knew that the action was futile.

Even through the wrapped bandage, Chase could tell that the gunshot wound was still bleeding.

Feeling his way around the bandage's fabric, he searched for the knot. If he kept loosing blood like that, he knew that he wouldn't have to worry about Nice Suit's return, because he wouldn't be alive to care.

When he finally found what he was looking for, Chase took a deep breath and wondered how much morphine was still running through his arteries, because he would need it.

Grinding his teeth, he pulled the bandage's knot tighter.

Sawing his own leg would've probably been less painful. The muscles on his thigh spasmed in response and Chase could feel the exact place where the bone had broken. The two pieces grinded against one another like nails on a chalk board.

He tried to keep quiet about it, for some insane reason not wanting his capturers to hear any sign of pain from him. Still, a loud groan escaped his pressed lips and for a moment the intensivist was sure that he would pass out.

Sweat was running down his face and Chase leaned against the wall, exhausted.

Getting up to turn the light back on was out of the question.

Getting out of there on his own wasn't even on the menu.

Trying to distract his mind from the receding pain, Chase wondered how long it would take for someone to come and look for him.

He patted himself, looking for anything that he might use to call help. His pager was gone and his cell phone was probably still at Thomas' house.

He remembered that he was talking to Cameron on the phone when he'd been shot. She knew where he'd been and she had surely realized that something bad had happen. Cameron would've called the police.

How long ago had that happened?

Had these guys been dumb enough to leave behind some clue about their whereabouts? Chase fervently hoped so, because if not, he was royally screwed.

He cleaned his sticky hands to his jeans, suddenly feeling disgusted with the notion of his blood covered fingers. The fishy smell, that seemed to be a constant part of the room he was in, helped to disguise the sweet coppery odour that he'd long associated with blood.

The smell of vomit had stopped affecting him one year after his father had left him and his mother.

Blood had taken longer. A couple of classes in the trauma room of the ER, during med school, had taken care of that too.

Chase was surprised to discover that the sight and smell of his own blood could still affect him like this.

Or maybe it was the feeling of fragility that came with it that he didn't like. He had decided early on in his life that he couldn't afford fragility. That sort of sentiment was reserved for those who could count on the support of others, of family and friends, to strengthen them up when they were fragile. He had neither. Not now. Not here.

House's voice, saying that if anything ever happened to him, no one would bother to move a finger, leapt and bounced inside his head, repeating the same words over and over again, teasing him.

Chase knew that, when those words had been spoken, it had been nothing more than House being House. But the more the sentence repeated itself in his inner broken record, the more it fed his rising panic.

Who did he have, after all? Who would care enough to go above and beyond to find him? His mind kept coming out with a blank for that question.

Sure he knew plenty of people, most of them workers from the hospital, but that tended to be a common 'curse' amongst health care personnel.

Outside the environment where he spent most of his days, Chase had to recognize that he didn't knew that many people, apart from his next door's neighbour and the guy from the coffee shop where he usually stopped before work. There were a couple of ex-girlfriends, but it wasn't like he kept contact with them.

House, Foreman and Cameron were the closest he had in this part of the world and it scared him to realize that he couldn't really depend on any of them for the serious stuff. Like being held hostage by a gang.

Chase closed his eyes, even if it made no difference in his dark world. He forced himself to stop self-pitting and start using his head.

Nice Suit's words came back to his head, thankfully replacing House's voice.

From what he remembered, the asian man had implied that Thomas had something that belonged to him and that Chase knew where that something currently was.

Nice Suit seemed to be under the impression that Chase knew Thomas, well enough to be in on whatever was going on between the two of them. Did that meant that Thomas worked for Nice Suit?

If he did, Nice Suit didn't seem to be very happy with his employee right now. What had Thomas taken from him, and why was Nice Suit so keen on having it back?

Despite the sweat still running down his back, Chase shivered. The room wasn't particularly cold or especially hot, so he figured that his body had finally started to fight the infection caused by the bullet wound. An infection that Chase knew his body would not be able to fight on its own. How long did he have before he was beyond help?

He ran a shaky hand through his hair, willing his mind to order his thoughts. Could he know something about Thomas that would interest Nice Suit enough to let him go?

Nervousness and the insanity of his own thought caused Chase to giggle in the dark. These people had gunned him down without asking questions. Why was he assuming that they would let him go if he gave them what they wanted?

Whether he gave in or managed to convince them that he really didn't know anything, they would kill him in the end.

The only reason for him to still be alive, Chase grimly figured, was because they actually believed that he could tell them where 'it' was.

A bitter taste filled his mouth. In his haste to prove that they had the wrong man, he had told them where Thomas was. He had pointed his finger right at PPTH and had put at risk Thomas and everyone that worked there.

Chase struggled to keep his breathing under control as he started to hyperventilate. If they went to PPTH and hurt anyone, it would be his fault, his doing.

He forced himself to breath slower. Maybe he was looking at the picture upside down.

'It' wasn't at Thomas house; they had searched the entire place and had obviously found nothing. How had they figured that Thomas didn't have it?

The answer to his own question came pretty quickly to Chase.

They knew because they had already gotten to Thomas. Could they be the cause of Thomas collapse?

Chase figured that no. Thomas had arrived at the hospital relatively unscathed. The way these guys had worked so far, Chase doubted that Thomas would've arrive alive at all if they had found him before.

This could only mean that they had found Thomas after.

Bile rose in Chase's throat once more. House and the others would've been in the direct line of fire inside the hospital. For all he knew, they could be all dead by now.

He barely had time to twist and turn his head to the side as he threw up again. With his stomach empty since the last time he'd vomit, Chase was left with nothing but the pain in his throat and the vile taste in his mouth.

Twisting his body had been a bad move. The pain in his leg, which had stayed under control as long as he didn't move much, flared up inside him, tearing him apart like a ferocious beast with sharp teeth.

The morphine had run out.

Soon, it felt like he had a hook under his skin and someone was slowly and viciously pulling the muscle out of his leg. There was no recess, no respite, no break to take a deeper breathe, just a continuous and tortuous pain that stole the air from his chest and reduced each expiration to a soft whimper.

Chase banged his head against the wall, holding his thigh with both hands. It didn't help.

He feverously wondered whether, if he banged his head hard enough against the wall, it would be enough to release endomorphines in to his blood stream.

The body's natural morphine was a hard thing to trigger and the relief offered by it would be brief, but beggars can't be choosers, and right then, Chase would take just about anything to bring the pain he was feeling to manageable levels.

He'd played football when he was a kid. He'd been around when his mother had one of her violent spells. He'd experienced a couple of years in his life when he tried the bad-boy attitude, the whole 'drugs & rock'n'roll' deal and crashed a car or two in the process.

Pain was no stranger to him.

The one constant, however, in all of the times when he'd broken a bone or scrapped his skin raw, was that help was only a phone call away. No matter how badly it hurt, all those times Chase unquestionably knew that if he called for help, help would come.

Now, trapped in a dark room, with no idea of where he was and no idea if help would ever come, Chase realized that pain without hope hurt a lot more.

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The intensivist realized that he had lost track of time when the door cracked open, old joints protesting against being used. Light steps sounded from the stairs and light flooded the room before he was ready for its brightness.

"You don't look so good, Doctor Chase," Nice Suit greeted him, the satisfaction in his voice belaying the concern in his words. "I have something that would make you feel better."

Chase, grinding his teeth to keep the pain silent, looked up at the asian man. The light that had seemed so weak before, felt harsh and too bright now.

In Nice Suit's hand there was a syringe filled with a clear liquid. Morphine.

The lure of the promised oblivion was almost more than what Chase could bear. All he had to do was make up some believable story and the asian man would pour that lovely dosage of relief in to his aching body.

Chase's cracked lips opened to speak. He was ready to beg for the chance of being without pain for at least a while, when he remembered that they had done this to him; and that they would kill him as soon as he was of no more use to them.

He shouldn't feel grateful towards Nice Suit because he'd brought the answer to all of Chase's prayers in his closed hand.

He shouldn't be thankful that the man had drugged him the first time and had saved him from this kind of pain before.

Anger at the helplessness and futility of it all filled Chase's chest, making the simple act of breathing even harder than before.

He blamed it on the fever; he blamed it on the blood loss; he blamed it on the pain; he stopped caring about who was to blame. "Fuck you!" He screamed, "Fuck you all!"

It felt good to scream, to release some of the pain inside. It left him too drained to fear any consequences, and that in itself was also a good thing.

The syringe landed in his field of vision, soon followed by a black polished shoe, as Nice Suit crushed his bottled hope with a vicious stomp.

Chase felt tears fill his eyes, biting his bottom lip to prevent a sob to escape his mouth. If this was how a junky felt at being denied his drug of choice, it was now easier for him to understand why it was so hard for them to quit.

The dooming sound of a gun being cocked filled the silent room. "You know, if you're not willing to cooperate, you are of no use to us," Nice Suit said in a quiet voice that let none of his anger trespass. "There is no reason for us to waste our time with you when we know who your friends are... the people that you work with... I'm sure that one of them will have some idea about where you've hidden the file."

The surprise at the hidden threat made the Aussie look up, water dripping from the corner of his eyes to wash his pale face. "You're insane," he whispered, unable to meet the other man's eyes as the barrel of the weapon pointed at him caught his attention.

"And yet you are the one unable to act reasonably," Nice Suit said, pressing the barrel of the gun to the other man's forehead. "Good bye, Doctor Chase."

They say that your life flashes before your eyes right before you die; they say that an overwhelming calm comes over you as you realize that there is no possible escape.

'They' have no idea, because 'they' have obviously never faced their own death.

In reality, there is no flashing moments, because your mind regresses to its more basic form, one where only survival matters and little thought is put in the process. You have no name, no identity, no feeling. There is only a body made of flesh and its fearsome will to survive.

In reality, there is no calm, because imminent death triggers your primitive brain, who's only function is to keep you alive. Adrenaline shoots like crazy through your arteries, causing your heart to thump twice as fast and twice as hard; your lungs embrace every molecule of air that you breathe in and squeeze twice as much oxygen from it; your eyes see sharper; your muscles tense and stretch like coiled strings, because they know before you do that you will react and when you do, they want to be ready.

"Wait!" Chase panted, closing his eyes against the imminent bullet in his brain. "I'll tell you where it is!"

The gun remained pressed against his forehead, but he opened his eyes in time to see the finger on the trigger relax.

"Talk."

"I hid it in my apartment," Chase spoke hastily, making up his story as he went. "It's in my bedroom, beneath my bed, under a loose tile on the floor."

The man had mentioned a file, or at least Chase believed that was what he had said. He had no idea if it was a paper file or a computer file; he had no idea how big a file they were talking about. He just hopped that the man believed him enough to go check.

Nice Suit seemed to be pondering the veracity of Chase's words, looking intently at his eyes, searching for the truth in the fevered blue pupils.

Chase met his gaze, knowing that if he didn't, the other man would call his bluff. He just hopped that his eyes didn't betray his despair and need to be believed.

"If we go there and find that you've been playing us, you'll live just long enough to deeply regret your actions," Nice Suit said, before turning around and leave.

When the darkness returned, Chase allowed himself to sag against the wall, sliding towards the floor.

He didn't notice that he'd landed on top of his own vomit, nor did he notice the tremors that cursed through his body.

He didn't even notice unconsciousness slowly crawling over his senses, dulling them before shutting them down, one by one.

The only thing he realized was that, for better or for worse, he'd managed to buy himself a little more time. And he prayed that before that time was over, death or the police would have found him.

Because when Nice Suit discovered that he'd been fooled, Chase feared that he would lose more than just his life.

The pain free oblivion was a welcomed change as Chase fell in to the bottomless pit of unconsciousness.

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Your reviews are my drug of choice. Do not let this addict go in to detox.


	7. Chapter 7

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CHAPTER VII

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"I waste half of my time trying to force you down here and now that it's closed, you come willingly?" Lisa Cuddy asked House, spotting him at the nurses' station of the empty Clinic.

The older man looked up at her, unwrapping a candy and popping in his mouth. "Figured it was a good time to do my clinic hours," he said, innocently looking at the abandoned place.

PPTH never really closed. In some of its floors, there were always people running from here to there, busy with a number of things that depended little on working schedules to happen. Like sick people.

The Clinic floor, however, was one of the hospital's quieter places, once it closed for the day. The roof was another of everyone's favourite place to find some peace and quiet, but between the limp and the cold night, House had chosen the warmer place. Plus, it came with free candy.

"Those are for patients and visitors," Cuddy warned him half heartily, as she saw him grab another sweet.

"I visit a lot of patients here," House defended himself.

"You don't even visit your patients," the woman reminded him. "What are you really doing here?"

House sucked on his candy, doing his best to turn the action as sexually charged as possible, in order to embarrass the woman in front of him enough to leave. "Could ask you the same... no date tonight?"

Cuddy folded her arms in front of her chest, wordlessly letting him know that whatever he was trying, it wasn't going to work.

House puffed his cheeks and slowly let the air out in surrender. "I was looking for this," he finally said, showing her the file that he had hidden from her view, on the desk.

Cuddy leaned over, ignoring the teenaged wolf-whistle that left House's lips in response to her revealing top. When she recognized the papers, her eyes found his, showing her anger. "This was in a locked closet," she said, fuming.

"So that's why it was so hard to open," House whispered in wander, even as his eyes pinned Cuddy down, daring her to reproach him on his actions.

"In my locked office," she pointed out, finally snapping the papers from his hands. "What possessed you to steal Chase's personal file?"

"I was curious," the seated man confessed. "Wanted to see who he had listed as a contact."

Cuddy's eyes grew large and the file almost fell from her hands. "Detective Bree called you?" She asked, fearing the worst.

House nodded negatively, quieting her worries. "He still has his father as medical proxy and next of kin," he pointed out.

It was Cuddy's turn to nod. She already knew that. "I guess it never crossed his mind to change that after his father's death."

After learning the news, Cuddy too had searched Chase's file, wondering if there was someone that she should be calling to warn about what happened. There was no one alive listed.

Only when she saw the round water stain that had fallen on the paper in her hands, had Cuddy realized that she'd been crying.

In the end, she'd come up with a number of silly reasons to stay close to the hospital on that night. In a way, even though she had rationalized that what had happened to Chase was in no way her responsibility, and there was really nothing that she could do, she still felt the need to be near. Even adults need someone to look out for them sometimes, and being there was her way to look out for the young man.

Her eyes were dry now, and she used them to pin House down. "Honestly, what do you think are his chances?"

House met her eyes briefly, before grabbing another candy. "I think he' screwed," he said matter of factly, getting up from his chair and turning his back on Cuddy.

The dean of the PPTH wasn't fooled. She could see it in the way that he had avoided her eyes and the way he leaned more prominently against his cane. She'd been around long enough to be able to read the signs.

She knew that, for all of his advocacy about blunt honesty, House almost never showed his true feelings. Not about the stuff that really mattered to him.

He kept his feelings securely locked; he held his cards very close to his chest, afraid that someone might catch his game. This, more often then not, resulted in his inner turmoil having physical manifestations.

She'd seen it happen more than once.

The worst time had been after his leg problem. A pain in his neck, that no one could seem to explain or alleviate, had started to bother him after he'd woken from the second surgery.

It got positively worse, day after day, after they had told him about the muscle removal.

And then one day, a week later, the pain in the neck just disappeared. Puff! One minute was there, the other it was gone.

Stacy packed her bags and left House in that same day. At the time, it had seemed insane to relate the two events, but Cuddy never stopped believing that the pain of sending Stacy away had been what had caused the mysterious neck pain. The pain of her actually leaving might have turned his heart bitter, but it did wonders for his neck.

And now, she could see it happening again. His leg seemed to be bothering him more; from the brief look that she'd got of his eyes, she'd seen the slight glaze in them, the out of focus sign that he was popping more Vicodin than what he should.

Her only surprise, she had to confess, was that he was reacting like this over Chase. She always thought that, of the three, Chase was the one that House liked less.

She could see now that that had been, after all, only one more of House's games.

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House leaned against the elevator's back, watching the square buttons turn bright yellow one at a time, as the different floors passed by. His right hand was forgotten over his thigh, slowly massaging his pain away. His cane had been abandoned by his side, as his left hand played with his bottle of pills.

He had no idea why he'd been so curious about Chase's file. He had, after all, access to his curriculum, where he had all sorts of information about his employee, since kinder garden to medical internships.

No, it had been the personal information, the one that the young man never seemed to divulge willingly, that had taken House to break in to Cuddy's office this time.

A strange sense of empathy for the Australian's loneliness bloomed in House's chest and he quickly squashed it down. He was the only one acting rationally about this. He couldn't lose that over the sad tale that he'd read in between the lines of Chase's personal file.

And he would never admit it to anyone that it was his own sad tale that was keeping him awake this night, stubbornly working on this case, even though his logical side warned him that it would do no good.

He considered swallowing another pill before reaching his office. Foreman and Cameron would probably be there already and he knew that he would need the extra dosage to be able to deal with Cameron's puffy eyes and Foreman's reproving attitude.

Their reactions to the day's events irked his patience. Cameron, as he had figured shortly after hiring her, was over emotive, over optimist and over involved in any matter that caught her attention. In her time under his tutoring, that aspect of her personality had become somewhat diluted with a healthy dose of rationality, but it was still there.

House knew her well enough to know that her concern about Chase had little to do with Chase and a lot to do with her Madre Teresa complex.

She saw someone hurt or suffering and she felt a personal need to fix that. There were no feelings towards the person behind the hurt and suffering involved, just Cameron's worrying and her general sympathy towards Human kind. It was the empathy that she lacked, but she couldn't see that.

Foreman was the polar opposite. For a guy so proud of having beaten all the statistics that said he'd grow to become a gang member or a drug dealer, his actions and decisions were painfully dictated by numbers and odds.

The fact that previous records indicated that people in Chase' situation were as good as dead was good enough for the neurologist to assume that that was the expected scenario.

Some of Cameron's over the top humanity had managed to, like soft water battering on hard rock, penetrate Foreman's hard beliefs. The fact that he hadn't died when that cop infected him, even though all odds pointed to that result, had contributed a lot too.

Still, both were a long way from the perfect scientific way of thinking that House wanted to imprint in to their minds. Because if they were able to think with one part rationality, one part logic and one part insane confidence, Cameron's eyes wouldn't be puffy and Foreman wouldn't be looking at him like that.

He pushed the glass door open, capturing their attention. "Tell me the good news."

"There are none," Cameron confessed, carefully putting her coffee cup on the table. Something about being four in the morning made her self-conscious about every little noise that she made. "Thomas' coronaries are clean as a whistle."

"You sure it was his coronaries that you stuck your catheter in?" House asked sarcastically.

It made no sense. They had ruled out everything else. Thomas collapse had been caused by his heart. So why wasn't anything wrong there?

"I was there House. There were no occlusions, no tearing, not even weird anatomies. The problem isn't there."

House sighed, feeling the tiredness of the long day in his bones. "So, if you were a disease causing collapses and elevated heart enzymes, where would you hide?" House asked no one in particular, his gaze wondering through the symptoms on the board.

The 'twelve hours' written in bright red caught his attention. Someone had written 'T- 2 hours' under it.

The 'r' looked like one of Cameron's loopy handwrite, which meant that Foreman had shared their little guessing game with her and that she had grabbed the time line like a life boat, starting her count from the time Chase had been shot . It also meant that two hours from there, when time ran out, she would lose all the hope that had kept her functioning so far and become useless to him. "I need ideas, people!"

Both doctors looked anywhere but at him. Foreman, leaning against the book shelve, had taken out the bandage from his eyebrow, the red gash now exposed. His tie was crocked and the white shirt, usually so pristine, was wrinkled. He looked as tired as House felt.

Cameron had let her hair fall loose from the usual pony tail, maybe a small measure to become more comfortable. The dark smudges under her blood shot eyes could be either from her own tiredness or from all the tears that House knew she'd be shedding the entire afternoon.

Neither seemed to be thinking about Thomas anymore.

That left him and his mind, which too was showing some signs of rebellion. He squashed them down again and stared at the dark outside, quietly going through the case's information one more time. His eyes registered the rain that had started to fall outside, but his mind was seeing columns of blood work data.

"The problem isn't in his brain and it isn't in his heart. What if it is in between?" House asked without turning to face them.

"Chase had suggested carotid sinus hypersensibility," Foreman jumped in, standing straighter. "We never got around to test that before but now…"

"Go do that and take him out of the anti-histaminic," House said. The word hypersensibility had made another theory pop in to his head and the man's current medication would prevent him from proving it. "We need to look at his coronaries one more time."

"We can't take him off his medication," Cameron started to protest, only to be interrupted by the stressing bipbip of her pager going off. Seconds after, the quieter tones of Foreman' pager joined hers.

"Thomas is awake," Foreman announced.

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House waited patiently as Foreman and Cameron took Thomas' vitals and deemed him ready to breath on his own. Only when the man had been extubated and had stopped coughing, did the older doctor neared him.

Cameron offered the man a glass of water, all of them watching as Thomas grabbed the cup with both hands and tilted it to his mouth without spilling. It was a good sign.

House quietly watched for little things, like the way the patient's eyes travelled around the room without staying too long anywhere; or the way the hands resting on top of the sheets alternated between opening and closing, grasping the bed's clothes with little strength; the shape of the dark bruises on the man's neck, where his would-be-killer had pressed down…

His observation were cut short when the back of Foreman's head blocked his line of view as he sat to begun the patient's neurological exam.

"Sir, can you tell me your name?" Foreman asked.

The answer came automatically to the man's lips. "Thomas Edison Joyce… mother had a thing for dead inventors," he explained with a weak smile and an accent so thick that made Chase almost sound American.

"How old are you?"

"Forty five, going on eighty, if what I'm feeling counts for anything," the man said, moving around stiffly. His left hand went to his neck, barely touching the fresh sores there. "What happened?"

Cameron exchanged a look with Foreman. "What's the last thing you remember?" She asked him.

Thomas turned his head to look at her, a confused look in his eyes. His gaze went from her to the police officer that had quietly entered the room. "Leaves… I remember brown leaves."

"You don't remember waking up in the hospital before?"

The man shook his head. "What happened to me?"

Foreman briefly explained him the assassination attempt, the tests that they'd been performing and the one that he was about to do.

Other than growing pale upon hearing the neurologist tale, House didn't catch any other sort of reaction. No confusion, no panic and mainly, no curiosity.

Who wouldn't be curious about his own potential killer?

House stood in the background and watched as Foreman attached the EEG electrodes to the man's forehead and started to press the left side of his neck, starting the carotid sinus test. Cameron's gaze was fixed in the EKG monitor, searching for any signs of the hypersensibility that they were searching for.

Thomas just stared at the ceiling, apparently lost in thought.

"Left side's normal," Foreman informed as his fingers started to press on the neck's right side. The absence of reaction was the same.

"It's not carotid sinus hypersensibility," Cameron concluded.

House just nodded, his mind already lost on a new enigma.

Thomas had been awake when the Japanese man had neared him. Thomas hadn't called for help because he had recognized his visitor and had believed that there was nothing to fear.

The fact that the killer had chosen to kill himself in order to prevent his capture meant that he was protecting someone else, probably the person who had send him to kill Thomas, someone that he feared more than death itself. A true kamikaze, if his nationality was any indication of behaviour.

Detective Bree had implied that the people that had taken Chase had been looking for something in Thomas' house.

What if the killer wasn't really a killer? What if he'd come to Thomas in search for the same thing that the others where looking for in the house?

What if the choking had been nothing more than a way of convincing Thomas to tell where the 'golden bucket', that everyone seemed to be looking for, was hidden?

The small pieces started to fall in to their rightful place inside House's mind, his eyes bright with the knowledge that he'd solved at least one of the puzzles. "So, where did you hide it?"

The question made no sense to the majority of people inside that particular room. To one person, though, it made a fearful amount of sense.

When House saw the fear in Thomas' eyes and the way he quickly turned his look away, he knew that he was right.

"I'm guessing it's something small, or else it wouldn't be this hard to find. It's not in your place and it wasn't with you, so where is it?" House insisted.

A voice lacking the Australian accent that House was expecting, answered him instead. "It was in the park where he collapsed."

Cameron jumped, her back turned to the man that had just entered the room. He'd done it so quietly that no one, other than the police officer that had called for him, had seen him arrive. House recognized the detective in charge of Chase's case. "Detective Cheese."

"Bree," the detective corrected without reacting to the obvious provocation. He greeted the three doctors with a nod of his red haired head. "Is he well enough to be questioned?" He asked House.

The older doctor looked at the frightened Australian man on the bed. Normally, House wouldn't let the police business interfere in any form in his hospital matters. This, however, was not a normal situation.

This patient in particular might know where Chase was and finding the missing intensivist was a priority that warranted out-of-normal attitudes. "Just don't beat him up too badly," he finally said. "The nurses might notice."

"I assure you that that won't be necessary," Bree said. "Nevertheless, I would appreciate it if you and your colleagues left us alone."

With a short jerk of his head, House send Cameron and Foreman out, ignoring their outrageous stares.

"The request included you too," the detective said when he noticed that House had closed the glass door behind his minions.

"Sorry, hospital rules," he said with a shrug. He had no idea if the hospital really had such rule, but he figured that if there wasn't one, it should be. In the mean time, he wanted to hear what Thomas had to say.

The detective kept his face impassive as he neared Thomas, conscious of the observant gaze of the doctor leaning against the far wall. "Thomas, for the sake of saving time, allow me to share with you what I already know," he said, slowly dragging a chair to seat by the sick man' side. "I know that your company is nothing but a front for a Japanese organization of international drug dealers; I also know that you work for that organization; I suspect that that organization has links to the Yakusa and I suspect that, when you discovered that, you panicked and tried to leave them. But they said no... How am I doing so far, Thomas?"

The other man kept silent, doing his best to ignore the policeman's words. House kept one eye on his facial reactions and the other on the monitor. The face didn't tell much, but the way his blood pressure was rising, he could tell that the detective had hit a nerve or two.

"I think that, in the end, you managed to find a way to leave them and make sure that your life wouldn't end in some dark alley, and I think that your way out is inside that USB drive that we found hidden in the park."

Thomas finally met the policeman's eyes, his face emotionless and composed. To House it looked like, with a blink of the eye, the man lying down had turned in to a stone statue.

"You already have your players and plot, detective... I'm sure you don't need me for anything else," he said before turning his gaze directly to House, "And you're my doctor... shouldn't you be protecting me from this sort of stress?"

"Your condition is not stress related," House promptly replied, "and besides, I'm curious too," he confessed.

"So you know what's wrong with me?" The Australian man asked, surprised.

"Yup... and I ain't gonna do a thing 'bout it 'til you cough up your story," he said in his best 'street talk'.

Bree turned a warning glance at the doctor, hoping, for his sake, that he was just joking.

His attention turned back to Thomas, thinking that he might as well take advantage of the man's confusion and fright at the doctor's words. "Thomas, you may think that this is only about catching another drug dealer, but there is an important aspect of this whole matter that you're still not aware of," the detective said, pausing for effect.

Only when the Australian man met his gaze, did he continued, "A man's life depends on what you tell me. Not any man, but one of the doctors that was dealing with your case, trying to save your life... now you can save him, Thomas," Bree said as earnestly as he could, given the fact that, no matter what Thomas said, he would still be leaving the hospital directly to a holding cell. His willingness to help would only reflect in the amount of time that he would be spending in that cell.

"You have the file... use it," Thomas said, some of the coldness leaving his eyes as he heard the policeman's words.

He didn't considered himself a bad person. He'd just made some really bad choices. And now that he'd chosen to leave it all behind, he was being punished for it. First his health, and now his freedom.

What this policeman, trying to talk sweetness and reason in to him, and what that doctor, staring in disgust at him, didn't understand, couldn't understand, was that doing right thing, giving them what they wanted, meant to loose a lot more than health or freedom.

This detective Bree might have all the theory down right, but he didn't know these people like he did. He never met them. He'd never worked for them.

He hadn't seen what they do to traitors.

Bree held is gaze until Thomas was forced to look away. "You're perfectly aware that we can't read it, because you've encoded it... explain me how to read it and you save a man's life."

"And condemn another in the process," Thomas whispered. "The minute the information inside that file is out, I'm lost."

"You can offer you protection," the policeman quickly reminded him, seeing a brief crack in the other man's defences.

The despair filled laughter that answered him was not encouraging. "You can't protect me from them," Thomas whispered softly. "Only the information in that disk can protect me."

"What's in there?" Bree asked.

"Everything."

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House and Bree left to find Cameron and Foreman waiting outside, as the older doctor knew that they would.

The detective stopped House before they reached the others. "I hope that you were not serious about your threat in there."

The anger in the doctor's eyes was enough to make him believe that he would in fact deny the patient his treatment, just out of spite. The words out of House's mouth where, however, more reassuring. "He has coronary hypersensibility. His histamine levels triggered a spasm in the arteries that supply oxygen to his heart. We're already treating him for that. He's going to be healthy enough to rot in jail."

The policeman nodded, not because he had understood any of what the doctor had said, but because he no longer felt obligated to report the older man for mal-practice. For some reason, the idea had disturbed him.

"Did he know anything?" Cameron asked as soon as the two men neared them, too curious to keep quiet.

The detective just shook his head. It was a frustrating answer, but it was the only one that they've gotten.

"I have to confess that I didn't see that one coming," House mumbled more to himself than to the others, leaning against the floor's nurse station. "I'd figured that he would either know nothing or that his brain would be too fried to process anything… didn't occur to me that he would simple refuse information to save his own scaly side."

"He knows where Chase is?" Foreman gasped, sounding surprised.

"We can't know that for sure," the detective pointed out, seeing the emotions escalating to a place he knew wouldn't be nice. "He was, however, in possession of information that might've lead us faster to Dr. Chase's location."

"So that's it?" House asked, a fury that they didn't heard often, making his voice sound as hard as rock.

"We still have the USB drive… our experts are working on it as we speak, but they fear that it was programmed to be open only by a particular port, one that Thomas won't tell us where is hidden."

That was not the answer that the older doctor wanted to hear. The barely hidden frustration was plain to see in the man's deep blue eyes, until he turned his back, childishly ignoring the policeman.

"Can't you force him to talk?" Foreman asked. He knew that the police was authorized to take extreme measures when the situation called for them. Wasn't this extreme enough for them?

The detective didn't answer him, but the look on his face told everyone there about his deep distaste for the black man's implication and suggestion.

"I'll inform you as soon as we know anything," he simply said, ready to turn around and leave. "Please let us know when we can take Mr. Thomas in to custody."

The loud clash of pottery crashing against the wall called Bree's attention back to the group. Of all of them, it surprised him to see that House had been the one sending the innocent plant flying across the room.

The other two doctors seemed as surprised as he was, both too stunned to move or say anything to the older man, just staring as he turned and walked away in to the dark corridor.

Day after day, the policeman was forced to deal with the consequences of crime, both for the victims as well for those who cared for them. It was never easy and it never lost it's utterly sense of unfairness, but he'd learned to deal with it. Much in the same way as, he figured, those three doctors had learned to deal with the death of their patients.

As he left, Bree hoped that they weren't forced to deal with the death of a friend too.

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The car where his partner was waiting for him was the only one with the lights on in those early hours of the dawn. Inside, Chavez was talking on the police radio.

"Any news?" Bree asked as he slid in to the driving seat, dusting off the water drops that had cling to his dark jacket.

"Hernandez just called," the Latino man said. "Someone's at the doc's house."

Bree smiled. Seemed like fate had tossed them a cookie.

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	8. Chapter 8

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CHAPTER VIII

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He'd just turned sixteen by the second time that he went to Japan. During one of his mother's 'good' days, Robert had managed to convince her to take the trip with him.

Ever since his father had left, their house had become a well of bad memories and misery to Margaret Chase. She could see the failure of their marriage in every niche of the place; in every piece of furniture that they had chosen together; in every smell that reminded her that Rowan was no longer there.

Margaret and Rowan had been drifting apart from each other for years, before he actually packed his bags and left. She never forgave him for doing that.

There were days when she would blame Rowan's profession for her misfortune; every now and then, she would blame Robert, because giving birth to him had ruined her looks. She rarely blamed herself or her drinking problem.

Robert would've done anything to get her away from her sinking depression and her bottles of gin.

The pills she took for her depression did little to help her, other than keep her depressed between the days when she ate nothing but sweets and found herself gaining more weight, and the days she would eat nothing at all, because the depression stole her appetite.

For days at end, she would just seat in their living room, staring at a random wall or at one of her old paintings, seeing nothing, talking to no one, ignoring him and doing her best to be ignored by life. Those were the days that would usually end with her drunk.

Then there were the hangover days, or worse, the fruitless tries to stop drinking. Those were the days that ended with something broken. Usually it was a pair of kitchen plates, a glass, a bottle. That time it had been his left wrist.

The good days were when she was feeling too guilty about something to think about her own misery. The guilt didn't usually last long, but that time, seeing the white cast on her son's arm and knowing that it was there because of her, it had lasted long enough for him to book the trip and take her to Osaka. They'd both needed the break and Robert wanted to practice the Japanese that he'd learned in school.

She didn't drink for three days while they were there. She had good days without feeling guilty for the first time in years.

On the night before their flight back to Australia, Robert woke up in the middle of the night with the sound of glass breaking. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that he wasn't home and, there for, it wasn't possible that his mother was the one responsible for the noise he'd heard.

The loud cursing that followed, however, was unmistakably hers. Robert jumped from his hotel bed and raced towards the noise with his heart hammering against his chest, afraid of what he might find.

They'd asked for a room on the ground floor, near the pool, because his mother didn't like ridding elevators and the stairs would leave her too tired. He heard the splash just as he was turning the corner.

The outdoors pool, deserted at that time of the night, was dark, save for a few feeble lights at the bottom of its oval shape, more for decoration than actual illumination.

It was enough, however, for him to see his mother's body floating in the water's surface, face down, unmoving.

He barely noticed her discarded clothes by the pool' side or the stains of vomit near the clothes or even the stain of blood, from where she's slipped and fell. Roberto just jumped in to the pool, not stopping to think that he had a broken wrist or that he was not strong enough to pull her out.

Only when he felt himself starting to be dragged down by the weight of his unconscious mother, did Robert remembered to yell for help.

He could still remember every detail of that night.

The air had felt stifling hot and then intensely cold as he jumped in to the water; his mother's skin had felt like cold ice when he'd grabbed her nude arms; the nauseous smell of alcohol and vomit in her breath when he had struggled to turn her face up, cradling her head against his chest; the stars above, looking distorted when seen from under water; the lights at the bottom of the pool, that had given the water a green glow, surreal and spooky; the way his mother kept slipping from his grasp, as if, even unconscious, she was still trying to run away from him.

On that moment, while he struggled to breathe and keep a hold on his mother, Robert had promised God that, if he and his mother survived that night, he would remain in the seminar where he studied until he turned eighteen and that, when the time came for him to chose, he would ignore his father's objections and follow his calling. He would dedicate his life in the service of God and become a priest.

The hotel's employees had rushed to their aid and had been able to pull them both out seconds later. Margaret had been embarrassed, but otherwise fine.

She had died two months after that, in their home, in her bed. Two bottles of gin, an empty bottle of benzodiazepines and a wasted promise were the only things that she had left behind.

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Thomas couldn't close his eyes. Each time he did, all he could see was Kempo's face, his fingers wrapped around his neck, squeezing, determined to find out where the files were.

Kempo had been with him since the beginning and it had pained him to find out that the Yakusa had sent a man that he had always considered a friend to do that job.

It had pained Thomas even further to realize how fast they had found out about the information that he had stolen, after all that he'd gone through to make sure that they wouldn't.

And now he was alive, which meant that Kempo was dead. Neither the police nor any of his doctors had said anything about the matter, but Thomas knew how these things worked.

The Yakusa wasn't condescending towards those who failed and Thomas knew that his plan to be free had already claimed its first casualty.

The policeman's words were still ringing in his ears. He hadn't explained much about why or how that doctor guy had fallen in to the Yakusa's hands, but Thomas did not doubt that it had been because of him.

The information that he had taken wasn't enough to bring the whole organization down. They were almost as ancient as Japan itself and it was almost impossible to make them disappear.

The data that he had stored in that USB drive was, however, enough to destroy a couple of Yakusa cells outside Japan.

In the grand scheme of things, it would be like a drop of water on a parched soil, but a drop of water that would cost millions to the Yakusa and, more importantly, would deliver a hard blow to its leaders' honour and credibility.

The first to fall would be Kazumasu-san, Mr. Kazumasu. The thought of that sadistic son-of-a-bitch being forced to kill himself by the higher bosses because of his failure was almost enough for Thomas to forfeit his own safety and give Bree what he wanted.

He shuddered as he remembered some of the atrocities that he had seen Kazumasu and his goons do.

Thomas was glad that he had never met that doctor that Bree wanted him to save. Kempo had been a dear friend and his death was already weight enough on Thomas conscious. He didn't want to add to that the knowledge of some stranger dying at Kazumasu's mercy.

Kazumasu never showed mercy. Thomas could only hope that the doctor's death, unlike some that he had witnessed, was a quick one.

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Bree, closely followed by his partner, opened the back door of the unmarked black van and sneaked inside. "They're still there?"

Hernandez turned his head away from the monitors that took up a large portion of the van's back and greeted the two arrivals. "Yup… three of them. Kazumasu and two of his goons came fifteen minutes ago. George, who's stationed in the apartment next door to the doc's, reported that they're doing a mighty racket inside."

His gaze returned to the three screens, each showing a different view of the entrance of apartment building where Robert Chase lived. "Big boss went in himself… what ever this is, Kazumasu is pretty desperate about it."

Bree nodded in agreement. The first thing that the detective had ordered, upon confirming that the abandoned car near the first crime scene was owned by a Dr. Chase, Australian intensivist working in the local PPTH, was to place one member of his team watching the missing man's home.

The simplest explanations were often the most correct and the detective's initial theory had been that Thomas and the missing doctor were working together.

There were too many coincidences connecting them both for them not to be.

The attempted murder, inside the hospital where he'd been admitted, of an apparently random Australian citizen, just hours before his team was called to that same man's residence in the States, on account of shots being fired, only to discover that a second, apparently also random Australian citizen, had gone missing there, leaving behind nothing but a broken cell phone and a short blood trail.

The police group that had investigated the attempted murder had gone ballistic when they processed the suicidal murderer and discovered his upper body covered in a myriad of colourful tattoos that linked him to the Japanese Yakusa. And by association, connecting Thomas and Chase to the same organization.

Bree had taken command over both cases, seeing that they were, in fact, the same one.

When Bree met the peculiar figure of Dr. House and his team, the detective started to realize that the simplest explanation would not work for this case.

After being persuaded to tell Bree and his partner the real reason for Dr. Chase to be in Thomas' house, the older doctor and his colleagues had told such a tale that, being so insane, could be nothing less than the pure truth.

What sort of medical professionals were these, that illegally breaking in to a patient's home was something usual for them? None of the three had said it in so many words, but Bree could easily see that this was not the first time that one of them, if not all, did something like this. He was sure that it wouldn't be the last either.

Be it as it may, they had still managed to give him a different view of the case. And the race to catch the remaining members of this Yakusa cell had rapidly changed in to a race to save a man's life.

Connecting Thomas' company with Kazumasu had been surprisingly easy, now that they knew what to look for. Kazumasu's connection to the Yakusa was well known.

They rarely caught a glimpse of the Yakusa man doing anything remotely suspicions or illegal. Usually the only thing that they caught was the mess and blood that Kazumasu left behind. The FBI and the Interpol had been after the man for years now.

Breaking in to Dr. Chase's apartment was as close as they ever got to nail him. "Any sign of the doc?"

Hernandez shook his head without glancing away from the feed of the street's traffic cameras. "Nada."

"Do we call reinforcements and take Kazumasu down?" Chavez asked, eager to put the Asian man finally behind bars.

"And accuse him of what? Bad neighbouring?" Bree mumbled, scratching his red hair. "No, we'll wait here until they come out."

"And then?"

"And then we follow them, hopefully directly to Dr. Chase," Bree said. Unless this Robert Chase had them all fooled and was in fact working in association with Thomas, which Bree now doubted, then Kazumasu would be leaving that apartment building mighty pissed. "Tell the intervention team that I want them ready to move in on my signal."

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Chase woke up to the disorientating feeling of drowning. He gasped and trashed his arms around, trying to reach an imaginary surface, before realizing that he wasn't in the pool, but in the same storage room as before.

Big Guy was standing over him, an empty bucket still in his hands. "Wake!"

Chase blinked the excess water from his eyes, trying to get his surroundings in to focus. Standing next to Big Guy was another man, one that the Australian hadn't seen before. He wondered how many of them there was.

The new man had, like the others so far, Asian facial features, only his looked more Korean than Japanese. His clothes were more casual than the others too, making him look more like a restaurant's waiter than a thug. The metal chain in his hands and the cruel smile in his lips told Chase that he wasn't there to give him the menu.

"What's going on?" Chase asked, struggling to seat against the wall. The wet clothes felt oddly good against his hot skin, but did little to stop the shivering. His leg felt numb again and the doctor briefly wondered if they had injected him with something while he was out.

The sickening smirk was back in Big Guy's lips, but he didn't answer. Obeying a nod from his shaved head, the Korean guy threw the chain over Chase's head.

Chase's immediate reaction was to cover his head with his arms, in protection. If everything that went up must come down, those metals chains would land right on top of him. Only they didn't.

Chase looked up and was surprised to see the two ends of the metal chain now hanging from a large pipe near the ceiling.

"Stand!" Big Guy commanded again, taking a set of cuffs from his pocket.

Chase looked from the dangly chains to the metal cuffs in the Japanese's beefy hands. The picture the two things were painting was not one that he wanted to be a part of.

He pushed his feet against the floor and used his hands to drag his body along the wall, like a clumsy crab, desperately trying to get away from the two men. "Look, whatever it is you have in mind… I'm sure we can talk about it and arrive to some reasonaaaha!"

Big Guy, like before, didn't give him enough time to talk. He reached down and yanked Chase's arms, grabbing both wrists with one hand, while the other expertly strapped the cuffs on. "Mr. Kazumasu very…" the Japanese man said while he worked, struggling to find the right word in English. When he couldn't find it, he just shrugged and reverted to his own language. "Very okoru... you!"

Before Chase had time to process that okoru meant angry or think who Kazumasu was and why he would be angry at him, he felt himself being pulled up by the cuffs. The Korean man had grabbed one end of the hanging chain and had hooked it to the cuffs.

Big Guy was still mumbling about Mr Kazumasu's unhappiness when he grabbed the other end of the chain and pulled it with all his strength. Chase felt himself almost flying through the air.

It was a weird and painful feeling to go from seating to standing with one pull of the wrists. Chase screamed when he felt something snap in his left wrist as the cuffs bit in to his skin.

With his arms stretched painfully above his head, it was becoming increasingly harder to breathe. He sucked in the pain with a broken gasp, not wanting to appear even weaker in front of these men.

Chase's legs trembled with the effort of keeping him up, the broken bone in his left one barely able to take any of his weight. Lost in the delicate balance between keeping his leg from bearing too much weight and to spare his wrists from taking the full brunt of his body, Chase was taken by surprise when Big Guy and the Korean man, each caring a long knife, came back and, unceremoniously, started to cut his clothes off.

Chase flinched at the contact of cold metal with hot skin. "Please don't do this," he whispered, forcing his mind to remember how to say it in Japanese. From what Big Guy had talked so far, he could tell that the man's grasp on English was tenuous at best. When they popped in his head, Chase grabbed them like a drowning man would grab a life-saver "Kudasai... yamete kudasai," he pleaded.

Big Guy stopped his cutting for one moment, surprise flourishing in his eyes upon hearing the familiar words coming from the western man's mouth. However, the moment didn't last long, as he resumed his work without saying a word.

Chase tried to get away, but it was pointless. Trapped between the two of them, the only thing that Chase could do was look down and keep them from seeing the humiliation and tears in his eyes as, first his black shirt and red undershirt, and then his jeans and boxers, were shredded in to strips and peeled away from him. "Yamete kudasai... yamete kudasai," he kept his mantra, saying 'please stop' over and over again, hopping that, at some point, the men would listen to him.

They worked quietly and smoothly, knowing exactly where to cut to finish their task as rapidly and efficiently as possible. The thought that this was not the first time that they were doing this hit Chase by surprise. How many more had met their end in that same dark basement?

It was clear to Chase that Nice Suit had already discovered that the trip to his apartment was nothing but a wild goose chase. The Aussie knew that there would be a price to pay for deceiving the Asian man, but if this was part of it, he wasn't prepared to pay.

Chase watched tensely as the Korean man grabbed one of the larger strips of what had previously been his shirt and approached him. Rationally, Chase knew that he was no less vulnerable now as he had been when he'd first woken on the floor of that storage room. The lacking of clothes, however, made him feel exposed and even more helpless, which he figured, had been their intention after all.

He felt acutely aware of the men's every move, following them around the room with his eyes, watching as they kicked his clothes in to a corner and stopped to check if the chains were well secured to the wall.

Chase tensed when the Korean man disappeared from his line of sight, standing behind him. "Yamete kudasai." The words were forced past the constriction in his throat, gaining more power than their mere meaning and becoming his only shield against their actions. "Yamete kudasai."

Chase could feel the man's breath in his neck, the smell of nicotine in his dirty fingers as he forced the strip of black cloth inside Chase's mouth and tied it behind his head. Apparently, they had grown tired of hearing his pleas.

He looked down again, trying to relieve the tension in his neck. His eyes landed on his wounded leg for the first time and Chase mentally flinched. It looked nothing like his leg.

The thigh was swollen, with skin that had turned in to a deep purple shade, all the way from his groin almost to his knee. Chase knew that the bullet had entered somewhere in the back, but he couldn't see any exit wound in his leg, which meant that he still had it inside him. Images of the number of times that he'd watched a nasty infection from the safe distance of his microscope rolled before his eyes and Chase wondered how the little buggers festering inside him would look like.

He blinked the sweat and salty tears out of his eyes, looking up when he heard the sound of the door closing. Chase grunted against the gag in his mouth. Were they just going to leave him hanging there?

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The look on Kazumasu's face when he came back to his car was frightening, to say the least.

The Asian man wasn't particularly tall, but his presence and the inherent power that seemed to surround him like a personal odour, were enough to rob anyone serving under the Yakusa lord of the will to contradict him.

Going personally to the doc's place and coming out empty handed was a hard blow to his honour and for the respect that he needed to maintain in front of his subordinates.

From the way Kazumasu's car sped away, Bree was sure that the Japanese man was eager to get some of his stolen respect back.

The detective had three different civilian cars following the green sedan where the Yakusa man was. Each would alternatively drive behind their prey for a couple of minutes, before turning to a different street and giving its place in the chase to the next car.

Kazumasu led them straight to the Green Dragon, a Japanese restaurant. The place was fairly known and Bree had even eaten there a couple of times before. Their sashimi was particularly good.

The detective looked at his wrist clock. It was almost eight in the morning. He doubted that the restaurant was even open at that time of the day.

From his hiding place inside the black van, Bree and the other two policemen watched as a big man opened a lateral door, letting Kazumasu inside.

"Find out who owns that restaurant," Bree ordered Hernandez.

While the other man's fingers raced through the computer's keyboard, searching the police database, Bree's thoughts raced inside his head.

All of his instincts were telling him that Robert Chase was inside that restaurant and that his life was about to come to an end. The detective had absolutely no facts on which to base this belief and, therefore, no justification to call the intervention team in to action.

To order them inside and be wrong about this could mean the end of his career; to not call them and stay inside that van while a man was possibly being brutally murdered would mean the end of his peace of conscious.

"The owner is a Mr. Jin Kuong… his wrap sheet is as clean as they come," Hernandez announced from the computer, looking up at the older detective.

Bree could feel both set of eyes on him, waiting for a decision, his decision. "Tell the intervention team to move in… warn them that these people are dangerous and that they might have a hostage."

They stayed inside the van and watched as, seemingly out of no where, a team of six men, all dressed in black, surrounded the building like sinuous snakes and stealthily went inside.

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Thinking himself alone, Chase was startled by the sight of the Korean man, seating comfortably on one of the boxes, quietly rolling up a cigar. His dark eyes were openly studding the prisoner's body, a hint of lust colouring the black depths, as he suggestively licked the finished cigar and lit it.

Chase looked down again, avoiding the other man's cold eyes. It was disturbing the way in which the other man's gaze kept travelling through his exposed skin knowing that he couldn't stop him from doing it.

The smell of nicotine started to overcome the smell of fish in the storage room much in the same way that the nauseous effort to split his body weight between two broken limbs started to overcome Chase's discomfort about being watched.

No more than five minutes had passed, even if to the Australian man it felt like a whole day had gone by, when the door opened again.

Nice Suit descended the stairs, closely followed by Big Guy. By the look of sadistic anticipation that he could see in Big Guy' smug face, Chase realized that Nice Suit was Mr. Kazumasu. And he certainly looked angry. More than angry, he looked vengeful.

Chase bit his gag and tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone suddenly dry. He could feel his muscles tense to the point that it actually hurt. Kazumasu was carrying a sword in his hands.

The Asian man said nothing as he took off his suit's jacket and approached the chained man, displayed meat at the mercy of his bidding.

His prisoner knew that he had lied and that his lie had been uncovered. Even if he weren't gagged, there was nothing that he could have said that would diminish the gravity of his actions.

Chase scream against his gag as the wooden casing of the shielded sword struck his wounded thigh. Fighting the bright spots of light that overcame his vision, the Australian opened his eyes, releasing the pain tears that had been trapped there. He looked at the Asian man and saw nothing but hate in his almond shaped eyes.

In his mind, the words 'Yamete kudasai' kept begging to be spoken. If his eyes could've talked, that was what they would be saying. 'Yamete kudasai.'

The protected sword swung again, hitting in quick succession, first one armpit and then the other. Chase lost his footing as consciousness fled him for a few seconds. He was unaware of when his screams turned silent; he was unaware of the shudders cursing through his whole body; he wasn't even aware of the blood running down his arms from where his wrists were supporting all of his weight.

The only thing that was still registering in his fogged mind was the vengeful man in front of him and the notion that this was how he would die.

Kazumasu unshielded his sword and raised it high, the steal blade catching the faint light and glinting.

Chase forced his eyes open and stared at the man that was about to kill him. They had stripped him of his freedom, of his rights and even of his privacy. He wouldn't allow this man to strip away his dignity as well.

God had tested him before and he had failed then. He had been too immature and simply not strong enough to face his own father and stand up for what he believed.

If this was his second chance, he would not make the same mistakes again. Between the choice of dying like a quivering, broken boy or dying like a man that accepted his fate with his head held up high and no fear in his eyes, Chase longed to be strong enough to choose the second.

He searched Kazumasu's eyes and held his gaze, surprising the Asian man with the fire that was burning inside him. For one moment, Chase saw the other man's anger diminish and subside, being replaced by pure madness.

His eyes were still locked with Kazumasu's when the door upstairs was kicked open and two men, dressed in black and carrying automatic rifles came through. "Freeze! New Jersey PD!"

In the following second, Chase was sharply aware of the number of events surrounding him. Big Guy and Korean man drawing their own weapons and aiming at the policemen; Kazumasu screaming in rage, swinging his sword towards Chase's unprotect body; the policemen firing their weapons, an orange light emanating from the guns' black mouths that made no sound; Kazumasu's body jerking wildly, like he was having a convulsion, while red dots of blood started to grown along the pristine white of his dress shirt, a look of incredulousness in his eyes.

The last thing Chase remembered seeing before closing his eyes was Kazumasu' sword falling to the ground, its blade undulating like a guitar string being played. It was a beautiful sword, marred only by the blood on its steal.

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He must've dozed off, because Thomas found himself opening his eyes and finding the looming figure of that older doctor that had been in the room during the police's questioning, towering over him. "Dr. House?"

The man in question limped closer to him; the monitor's light did a poor job of lighting the doctor's face. Thomas saw the empty syringe in his hand. "Decided to treat me after all?" He asked.

House shook his head, a hard look overcoming his eyes. "Came to prove my theory."

"Which is?"

"That a rat will bite even his own tail to assure his survival," he simply said, quietly silencing the alarms in Thomas's monitor. "Your heart's condition can be quickly triggered by a number of chemical substances, none of which lasting longer than twenty minutes in your blood stream," House calmly explained, resting his cane against the bed and seating near Thomas' legs. "I've just injected you with one of them, called Acetylcholine. Soon enough, the arteries in your heart will start to close one by one and your myocardium, the heart's big muscle thingy, will slowly start to die. Ever felt muscle death?" He paused, looking Thomas in the eye, pleasantly noticing the beads of sweat starting to form in the man's forehead. "It hurts like hell… trust me, I know," he answered.

Thomas' blood pressure started to rise as he took in House's words, wondering why the guard outside was doing nothing to stop this. "You can't do this," he whispered, all strength gone from his voice. "You're my doctor… they'll know if you kill me."

House smirked. "No, your heart killed you, or will kill you… unless you give me the location of the port that opens that damn file or I swear to you, my unsympathetic face will be the last thing you'll ever see."

Thomas tried to reach for the panic button next to his bed, but the movement aggravated the growing pain in his chest and his arm fell limp against the bed. He gasped for breathe, terrified to realize that he didn't have the strength to call for help.

The room had glass walls, but the corridor outside was empty and dark, with no one to look at him. Even the guard, the man that was supposed to be protecting him, had his back turned on him, vigilant of the dangers that came from outside.

"Can you feel it already?" House asked with his eyes on the monitor, watching the slow deterioration. "Just tell me where it is and I stop all of this."

Thomas looked at the man that he had trusted to nurse him back to health. Doctors were supposed to make you feel better, not torture you and kill you. He struggled to breathe one more time, his hand clasped over his racing heart. "Alright… I'll tell you," Thomas whispered, feeling his life ebbing away.

"House!" Foreman's voice boomed inside the otherwise quiet room. "What the hell do you thing that you're doing?" He yelled, getting to the patient' side in two angry strides. Cameron was right behind him, looking between House and the patient, incredulous.

The neurologist looked at the monitor, noticing the fast rhythm and the high blood pressure. When his eyes fell on the syringe in House's hand, his gaze turned hard as rock. "What did you gave him?"

"Acetylcholine," Thomas whispered faintly, his hope for survival renewed now that the other doctor had arrived. "Please... help me... He gave a heart attack!"

Foreman's eyes pierced House, who was trying his best to look innocent. The ACh was a neurotransmitter and the neurologist knew that the only way for it to aggravate Thomas' condition was with a direct shot in his coronaries. He had little doubts that House had in fact injected him with it, but he couldn't have injected it in the right place. Not here, and not with that un-needle syringe. The heart attack that Thomas was talking about was only in his head. "What are you trying to do?" Foreman asked House.

But before the older man could answer, Cameron was already by Thomas' side, coaching him to take deep breathes and relax, because his heart was fine and no harm had been done.

"You idiot!" House snapped at her. Now that he knew that his life had never been in danger, Thomas would not only keep his mouth shut, but would never believe House again, if he tried to pull another bluff like that one.

The guard choose that moment to pop his head inside the room, alerted by the altered voices inside. "Everything ok in here?"

House looked at Thomas, expecting him to rat him out for his actions, but the other man, relieved that his heart was not about to stop and realizing that he would get no sympathy from no one in that room, choose to remain quiet.

"Everything's ok," Foreman answered for them, looking at the policeman with eyes that told him that he wasn't welcomed there. "We were just discussing the case."

The policeman didn't appreciate Foreman's hostile look, but turned his back anyway. "Ok then, I'll just be outside."

As soon as the guard left, House turned his cold stare towards Cameron "Thanks for the help," he said, his voice laced with sarcasm as he grabbed his cane and moved to follow the guard. "Now that you've ruined my Dr. Evil roll play, I'll go some where else to play my world domination game... maybe Wilson's free..."

"Actually, you need to go answer your pager, the one that you abandoned in your office," Foreman said, leaving Cameron to make sure that Thomas was indeed fine and would rest easily the rest of the night. "Bree's been trying to contact you for the past ten minutes," he said, handing the blinking pager to the older man.

House raced to the nurse's station as fast as his bum leg would allow it and quickly dialled the phone number that Bree had left with him. Foreman followed him, aware that the detective wouldn't have called unless he had important news. Cameron joined them seconds later.

With each ring of the phone that went unanswered, House' stomach clenched harder. The suspense was killing him and for a moment he wondered if the policeman was doing it on purpose. Bree's levelled voice greeted him seconds later.

House listened while the man on the other side gave him the news, his face an unreadable mask. "Ok, we'll be ready. Thank you," he finally spoke, hanging the phone right after.

Cameron was biting her nails, searching House's face for any sign of bad news. It was probably the first time that she had heard the older man thank anyone for anything, which could be very good or extremely bad. She was feeling too anxious to even ask.

"So, what did he say?" Foreman asked for her.

House took a deep breath, pressing his cane harder against the floor and watching the barely noticeable indentation that it caused on the rubber tip as he tried to collect his feelings. "They found Chase… the ambulances should be arriving in to our ER any minute now."

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Well, folks, it's almost over now. Many thanks to my wonderful reviwers! Also, I do not speak Japanese, so the words used in this chapter are the hard fruit of long hours surfing the net. If they mean anything but what I meant for them to mean (boy, english can be confusing!) I apologize and hope that someone that knows the real thing corrects them. Huggs!


	9. Chapter 9

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CHAPTER IX

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More often than not, you fail to appreciate what you've got until you lose it. Most of the times, you never get it back.

Gregory House had never liked running in his entire life. He would, at most, do a short distance dash if he had to get somewhere faster, but he didn't ran because he liked it and certainly not because he enjoyed it.

Running, just for fun of doing it was, by his definition, as much fun as having sex with a frigid woman. It was tiring, sweaty and, more importantly, it was pointless.

If Man had been meant to run, then Man would have four legs instead of just two and be called Horse instead of Man.

Only when he'd lost a portion of his right leg's quadriceps muscles and, therefore, could no longer run, did he understand the appealing side of the sport.

He would find himself in public parks, gazing in envy at those that passed by him running, dressed in their trendy sports wear and pumping their flashy sneakers against the asphalt, looking like they didn't had a care in the world. Sometimes he would stay there for hours, waiting for one of them to trip and break something, just to see that healthy glow being wiped out from their smiling teeth.

House looked at the white sneakers in his feet. They weren't as much for running as they were comfortable for walking. He pushed the call button on the elevator one more time, wandering if the damn metallic thing had forgotten that he was still there, waiting.

After Bree's phone call, Foreman and Cameron had sent one guilty look at him before he discarded their pity with a nod from his head and told them to stop being idiots and just go. They were young and their legs were whole, so they could run to meet the ambulances at the emergency room doors.

He might have the running sneakers, but he still was the one not moving, just waiting for his ride down to arrive. He cursed the silver doors until the over joyful ding! finally sounded and the elevator slid open, painfully slowly, ignorant of its occupant's hostility and hurry.

House pushed the button that would finally take him to the ER's sublevel and found himself surprise by the jittery feeling inside his chest. He was a certified diagnostician, one of a kind in his area of expertise, but he would be ultimately of no use in Chase's case. The ER doctors would have to be dumber than he thought if they couldn't handle a simple gunshot wound.

So, the jittery wasn't professional… and it wasn't because of the five coffees that he'd drunk during the night, because he'd already peed most of them out... which only left personal.

As the hours had roll by and Chase's whereabouts still remained a mystery, House had figured that his growing frustration was probably due to the fact that he had a puzzle on his hands and couldn't seem to solve it.

The puzzle was solved now, and still he felt that tingling sensation all over his legs, begging him to run to the ER; still felt angry at an elevator, for not descending faster, two things that he couldn't do anything about. House popped the cap of his Vicodin's prescription bottle and fished the last pill out.

As the bitter medicine went down his throat faster than the elevator went down the elevator shaft, its desired numbing effect dulled everything but the uncomfortable knot in his stomach.

House found himself wondering when had he made that final cross from being amused and intrigued by Chase's illusive personality in to being concerned for the young man's well being.

Because Vicodin was a powerful pain killer, and yet he could still feel that dull ache in his heart.

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The elevator doors finally opened to reveal absolute chaos. "What the hell is this?" House asked out loud.

The PPTH's emergency room wasn't that big, usually dealing with a small number of cases when compared with bigger hospitals. It was also a place that House rarely visited, but even he could see that the blur of frenetic activity that was going on was not normal for that time of the day.

Even though House's question had been a rhetorical one, a passing nurse who had recognized him, her hands filled with various supplies, answered anyway. "This is the ER," she said sarcastically, her nose performing a swift notion towards the chaos direction, "and that would be the victims of the car pile up that Princeton General as been sending us for the last half an hour."

House turned to give her a cold stare, in response to her sharp tongue, but she was already gone, lost in the colourful crowd of hospital staff dressed in white, blue, violet, yellow and all shades of stains. He couldn't see Foreman or Cameron anywhere.

House heard the sound of speeding wheels and jumped out of the way just as a group of paramedics rushed by him, hurryingly pulling a gurney in front of them. "Careful!" One of the uniformed men warned, a bit too late.

"Cripple!" House shouted, raising his cane to state the obvious.

A flash of yellow hair from another passing gurney captured his attention away from the offending men. On closer inspection, however, it proved to be just a middle age woman supporting a nasty cut on her neck and not his intensivist.

House looked around, trying to ignore the blurry activity and focusing on what he was searching for. He couldn't remember what Chase had been wearing when he had last seen him.

The dark blue from two uniformed policemen, standing guard near a particular set of closed curtains, caught his attention. Limping his way over there, House discovered Cameron, with blood covered gloves trying to stop the gushing blood from a man's torso.

Her face was set with grim concentration, as one of her hands pressed down on the wound while the other took the man's pulse beneath his jaw. Even lying down, the man she was attending to looked enormous, a thin mouth and small almond shaped eyes floating in a pale face that didn't seemed to belong in the land of the living anymore.

"He's one of them," Cameron whispered, raising her eyes to peek between two bangs of loose hair, meeting his eyes for a short moment.

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They had arrived only five minutes ago, but Cameron could already feel the sweat and grime accumulating on her skin. She and Foreman had arrived at the ER completely unprepared for the confusion that had greeted them. A constant flow of gurneys passed by them, some with screaming people, others, more worriedly, with very silent patients.

Dr. Terrance, in charge of the ER shift in that chaotic morning, having spotted two available pair of hands with apparently nothing to do, had immediately recruited them to help. Their protests of having little experience in trauma and being there on a personal matter had fallen in to deaf ears and soon both were up to their elbows in exposed fractures and bleeding members.

Trying to keep one eye on the main entrance, checking if Chase had arrived in the mean time, and another on the patients that were being handed over for her to triage, Cameron had soon found herself working on a tattooed asian man with a gunshot wound in his chest who, despite being unconscious, was been closely guarded by the police. He obviously wasn't one of the pile-up victims.

"What happened to him?" She asked the policeman, her hands already busy trying to slow down the stream of blood coming from just bellow the man's left fifth rib. From the way his respiration was declining, she figured that his left lung was about to collapse.

The policeman, a young man with pale hair and black rimmed glasses, avoided looking at her but answered anyway. Cameron realized that he wasn't comfortable with the sight of that much blood. "Some poor guy was being held by this gorilla and his friends. We went in, they fought back and ultimately lost," he said, looking away from her. "This guy and two others were the only ones still breathing in the end."

Cameron' stomach clenched and the needle, that she was about to use to relieve the lung's pressure, fell to the dirty floor as she put two plus two together and realized that this was one of Chase's kidnapers. "And the guy that they were holding?" She managed to squeeze through the knot in her throat.

The policeman shrugged. "Different ambulance… The detective in charge said to bring them all here, so he's probably here somewhere too."

Cameron turned her attention back to the unconscious face, watching it more carefully. There were lines of pain etched on his forehead and what looked like tear tracks down his slightly chubby cheeks. He looked so normal.

"Doctor?" One of the nurses called her back to reality, handing her another needle. "Everything ok?"

Cameron had just nodded, trying to shake her newfound distaste for touching the wounded man, and resumed her work. House had arrived shortly after that.

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"And Chase?" House asked, stepping aside as the gurney with the Asian man was wheeled out to in to the OR direction.

Cameron carefully peeled her dirty gloves and tossed them in to the bio-hazard container. "Couldn't find him yet, but the police confirmed that he came here," she said, joining House' search.

Amongst the number of voices struggling to be heard in the ER's noisy background, one screaming voice called the attention of the two doctors. It hadn't sound completely like Chase, more of a raspy version of his voice, and it hadn't spoken in English, but still, both had no doubt that it had been the missing doctor.

On the other end of the long line of curtains, they spotted Cuddy's dark curls, peeking out from a closed area. They figured that the scream had come from there.

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The fact that none of the doctors working in the Diagnostics department had bother to call and warn her about Chase's eminent arrival at the ER had left Cuddy in a very foul mood. She hadn't been prepared for the nasty surprise she got.

Alerted by Princeton General about the overflow of victims from the car pile up and the number of victims that they would be sending to PPTH, Cuddy had taken advantage of the fact that she was already in the hospital and had gone to the ER personally, to make sure that everything went smoothly.

The last thing she had expected to see was Chase, being wheeled inside by two EMT's.

On instinct, she had moved closer to the gurney carrying him, half listening to their monologue about vitals and visible wounds as they moved him in to a curtained area and lifted his limp body in to one of the ER beds.

He hardly looked like the young man that she was used to see trailing around behind House or moving with an easiness born out of practice in any of the ICU's.

On first glance, she could see a splinted left forearm and a heavy bandaged laceration on his chest. There was a nasty looking gash on the right temple, which looked like it had stopped bleeding some time ago and two ugly bruises that ran symmetrically from underneath both his arms towards his chest. "Dr. Chase? Can you hear me?" She asked, gently grasping his right shoulder.

Chase looked at her scared, something that came as no surprise to her given his situation. "Dr. Chase," she found herself talking, without really knowing what she wanted to say. Was she going to tell him that he was going to be ok? It sounded condescending even to her ears.

Would she tell him that she would make sure that he had the best assistance available until he was on his feet again? That was reassuring only to her own consciousness, not necessarily his. She ended up settling for a heartfelt "You're safe now."

He jerked away from her touch, moaning and gritting his teeth. His eyes rolled for one brief moment before he turned his head away from her and bit his lower lip, trying to keep any more moans to escape his mouth.

For a fleeting moment, Cuddy was back in time, looking down at House's broken body, blood flowing freely from his stomach, the blue in his eyes turning grey from the pain.

Cuddy blinked hard, forcing those eyes away from her memory and focusing on the slightly different shade of blue that was avoiding looking at her now. She cupped his face, forcing him to pay attention to her words, "Chase… do you know where you are?"

His lack of response and the way his usually pink lips were deprived of any colour were worrying her. The blue orb trying to escape her pen light was glassy and bloodshot and no matter where Cuddy touched him, Chase's skin felt too hot, hotter than the 99.5ºF that the EMT's had reported him having. "I need another temperature reading," she asked one of the nurses.

Cuddy pulled back the white sheet that was still covering Chase's lower body, looking for the gunshot wound that House was so sure that he had. From the look of his lips and fingernails, Chase was losing blood and she couldn't see from where.

Two things were obvious as soon as she uncovered him: Chase was completely naked and his left leg was a mess. She briefly wondered if the EMT's had taken all off his clothes for any particular reason or if this was how he'd been found. She shuddered at the second though, pondering the implications of that.

Beneath the dried blood, Cuddy could see the dark bruising that circled almost his whole upper thigh. The paramedics had wrapped it with several layers of gauze, but even so the white disposable sheet beneath him was getting red.

Two nurses were busy cutting away the EMT's bandages, attaching chest electrodes and getting multiple venous accesses wherever they could, working around her as Cuddy gently prodded the injured leg. The bone felt broken to her.

"103," one of the nurses called out.

Cuddy cursed. He was burning up! They needed to cool him off before sending him in to the OR. "Get some ice packs and cold serum in here!"

She had turned around for just one second, grabbing the curtains to close them tighter and give Chase a bit more of privacy, when her attention was quickly called back to him.

He was mumbling something, struggling against each touch he felt on his skin. One of the nurses had just started to push a needle in to the back of his right hand when he jerked away from her with such violence that she almost fell on to of him.

"Yamete! Kudasai… kudasai, yamete kudasai," he screamed in a coarse voice, gradually falling in to nothing but a whimper.

Cuddy felt her heart racing inside her chest as she reached over and grabbed his right arm, preventing him from reaping away the inserted needle. She frowned, realizing that Chase wasn't even speaking English.

She didn't want to imagine what he'd been through in the hands of his kidnappers, but looking at his condition, she was starting to form a pretty good idea. Her heart clenched in sympathy for the young man when she looked at the arm that she was restraining. There were cuff marks on his wrist, some deep enough to be responsible for the blood that caked his forearm. Beneath it, she could see the beginning of dark bruises that looked too much like large fingers.

Her eyes landed on the crux of his arm, where the bruising was deeper. The tell tale marks of previous needle punctures were easy to see. "How many times did you try to puncture his veins anyway?" She asked, slightly annoyed by the pointless added suffering of too many failed trials to capture a simple blood vessel.

The nurse just shrugged her shoulders, connecting the salvaged needle to a bag of fluids. "Just this one," she said, tapping the whole thing securely with a white bandage. "He already had those."

Cuddy felt a shiver going down her spine. The first thing she had intended to give Chase, even before getting him in on antibiotics or in to surgery, had been painkillers. She grimly realized that she couldn't now. Not before they knew what he'd been injected with before. "Where are those ice packs?" She shouted her frustration, for the nurse that had yet to return, and for her tied up hands.

"I knew he was a natural blonde," House's sarcastic tone cut through Cuddy's despair.

She failed to realize that the remark had only been House's way of breaking the tension. She just pushed the sheet to cover Chase's lower body again, feeling an intense need to protect the young man from enquiring eyes and looked at House, ready to release her frustration on him too.

However, despite what came out of his mouth, she could see the concern in his eyes and his need to help, so she swallowed the angry words that were about to leave her mouth and felt a bit foolish for acting more like a mother hen and less like a doctor.

Behind House, Cameron was staring at Chase's broken body, struggling to keep her eyes dry as she professionally donned a fresh pair of gloves and stood ready to do whatever was needed. "Why isn't he in surgery yet?" Cameron asked Cuddy, her voice levelled with a slight touch of anger.

Ever since the dean of medicine had chosen to act behind House's back, healing a patient by using his theories and keeping the truth from him, destroying his confidence in the process, Cameron had found herself with little respect for Cuddy's decisions.

She could think of no reason for the older woman to be keeping Chase in the ER needlessly.

Chase looked... sick, was the best word that she could come up with. She had seen him hungry, sleepy, hung over, exhausted, excited, pissed, horny, worried... she had never seen him looking like now, with such an opened vulnerability in his face that it broke her heart.

Had it really been just yesterday that she had seen him waltzed in to the conference room of the Diagnostic's department with a pleasant 'good day' on his lips and yet another ugly tie around his neck?

"He's in pain," House pointed out, his voice serious for once. It was drastically obvious to see that, by the way Chase's fingers curled around the sheet that covered him and the way his neck muscles tensed every other second.

House read the labels on the bags already hanging over Chase's form. Broad spectrum antibiotics, saline infusion, gelofusine infusion, albumin drip, all the good stuff that he needed to fight the infection and blood loss. What he couldn't see was any pain killers being added to the collection that the nurse kept adding to Chase's iv line. It wasn't like Cuddy's to ignore such a basic thing.

"They gave him something," Cuddy said as she saw House's enquiring look. She turned Chase's arm ever so slightly so that House could see for himself.

"Damn assholes!" He cursed, knowing as well as she did the consequences of adding their drugs to an unknown one already running through Chase' system.

For the first time since he had crossed in to that curtained area, House looked at Chase's face, noticing the pallor and the sweat covered hair that clanged to his cheeks. He tried to measure the level of coherency behind the frantic blue eyes. "Chase, we need to know what they injected you with... can you tell us?"

It was like talking to a four year old in a toy shop. House pinched Chase's left arm, hating himself for doing it but hoping to draw his attention through fresh pain. "Focus Chase... what did they gave you?"

Chase turned to sound of his voice and looked at him, blinking eyes trying to focus on the person talking to him. His face scrunched up, in pain or in fear, House couldn't tell for sure. A whispered 'kudasai' left his dry lips again as his eyes filled with fresh tears. House would've missed both if he hadn't been standing so close.

"Ice packs," Foreman's voice joined the moment, his dark eyes taking in the scene. House leaning over a patient with a look on his eyes that neared pain. "Is that Chase?" He asked, quickly taking notice of the number of injuries on the other man as the ice packs were scattered over his body. "He looks like crap," he whispered.

"So do his vitals," House said as he looked at the monitor. It was clear to see that Chase was too out of his mind to give them any straight answer. They could wait for the blood results to return and act when they knew for sure what he'd been given, but that would mean staying there and continue to listen to the pitiful sounds that kept coming out of the young man's mouth.

House figured that, by the way Cameron's face was growing paler by the minute, if they didn't stopped that soon they would find themselves dealing with two patients. "Put him under."

A "He has a head injury!" and a "Do you want to kill him!?" sounded simultaneous, one coming from the neurologist's mouth and the other from a distraught Cameron.

Cuddy remained silent, weighting the risk of what House was suggesting. "We have no idea of how compromised his central nervous system may be from the drugs and whatever else they did to him," she finally said.

"No we don't, but I do know that if we let him go on like this, he'll be going in to shock in the next five minutes," House said, knowing fully well that his course of action could as easily kill Chase. "There's four of us here... if anything happens, I sure one of us will remember what to do in case of cardiac arrest."

The slow nod that Cuddy gave to Foreman, effectively ordering him to sedate Chase, felt like the heaviest motion that her neck had ever made.

They all watched in morbid fascination as the slightly yellow liquid left the syringe in Foreman's hand and slowly entered the iv line in Chase's arm. For the next few seconds they waited, tension building up in their muscles as Chase's body gradually started to relax and his eyes lost their struggle to keep open.

The monitor's alarms kept blissfully silent throughout the whole thing and House let out a breath that he hadn't realized that he'd been holding.

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By the time the blood work results were back, Chase had already been moved in to a private room, as much away from prying eyes as one could get in a glass walled hospital. Faint traces of morphine had been found, although none of them could phantom an idea of why the Yakusa men had given it to Chase in the first place.

A quick passage through radiology on his way there had confirmed a broken femur and a hairline fracture in the left ulna. The bullet, or what was left of it, was pressed tight against a broken piece of bone, having left damaged vessels and tore muscle in its path of destruction.

Taking advantage of Chase's controlled state of unconsciousness, Cuddy had called Cameron apart and had shared with the other woman her concerns about a sexual assault. The fewer the people knowing about her suspicions, the better, and in a small way, it seemed to Cuddy that the whole thing would be less intruding if Cameron was the one doing it. It was no secret in the entire hospital that the two young doctors had shared a bed at least once.

So she had asked the younger woman to come up with a way to be left alone with Chase and check for any signs that would prove her right or, hopefully, wrong.

Cameron had stared at her like she had grown an extra head, the implications of Cuddy's request making her stomach rebel, but swallowing down her own discomfort, she had just nodded and reassured the other woman that she would be the first to know of the results. A sort of silent understanding had come over the both of them.

Managing to stay alone with Chase had been easier than what Cameron had expected. House had disappeared in to his office shortly after Chase being sedated and Foreman, professing his exhaustion, had declared that he would try to catch some sleep in the doctor's lounge.

None of the members of the Diagnostics department had had any sleep in over twenty four hours. Cameron could already feel that deep tiredness in her muscles and behind her eyes that only came with too many hours on her feet. She closed the blinds on Chase's room and began her grim task.

It was strange how the contact between her hands and Chase's skin felt so different now that she was examining him, from when she had been having sex with him. It was the same body and it were the same hands, running through familiar paths that she'd touched before but, while lust had been the major emotion on her mind then, now all that she could feel was that weight at the bottom of her stomach, a weight that only lifted when she was sure that nothing sexual had happened during Chase's captivity.

The rest, however, was still worrying her. Chase's fever had dropped to more reasonable figures, but he still felt hot to the touch. Cameron filled a bowel with cold water and decided it was time for someone to clean the grime and blood from Chase's body. The cold water would've felt good on his skin if he'd been awake to feel it and even unconscious, Cameron wanted to believe that a small portion of that relief would penetrate his mind and make him, at the very least, feel taken care of.

She worked quietly and methodically. He was a broken puzzle and she was doing her best to put all the pieces together.

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"We need to make a decision," Cuddy whispered in a defeated voice as she entered House's office. The only good news that she'd received that whole day had been Cameron's page, saying that the exam had been negative. And now she was back at the bad news.

She had expected to find House slouched over his couch, but instead, he was seating behind his desk, playing with his giant tennis ball.

"About?" House asked without looking at her. He had seen Chase's blood work results and he knew exactly why she was there.

"Chase' surgery."

They had waited as long as they could, hopeful that the young man's condition would stabilize enough for the bullet to be removed safely. But as the hours passed by and the infection showed no signs of subsiding, Cuddy could no longer postpone a decision.

If they chose to do the surgery now, they would be able to remove the source of the infection and save Chase's leg, but probably kill him in the process. If they waited until the infection was under control and it was safer to do the surgery, it could be too late for his leg. "His fever' still too high and the infection is causing havoc on his whole body... but if we don't do something..." Cuddy said gently, knowing that House, better than anyone, knew the consequences of leaving a sick limb untended to.

She could tell from the way House was clenching the ball in his hands that this was still a particular sore subject for the older man. It felt like _dejá vu_ for her too.

It was House's nightmare all over again, only this time he wasn't the one lying in that hospital bed and there was no girlfriend to go against his will while he was unconscious.

"Chase has no medical proxy and he's in no condition to make this sort of decision," she went on. Technically, none of them could make the decision for the young man. Medically, she knew that the safer bet was to wait, doom the leg, but save his life. Personally, she would rather House made the decision for her, because it was too painful for her to go through all that guilt and self doubt again. She couldn't find the strength within herself to once more choose between condemning another person to either death or a crippled life.

While she waited for his answer, Cuddy could see the mask of indifference coming over House's face like a blank shroud. When he had been faced with the same choice, he had chosen to have a normal life, even if he died in the process. The choice had been ripped away from him and the consequences of that action were bitterly reminded to him every morning of his life, each time he got up from his bed and struggled to get his numb leg working again. He was a man of extremes, who would've rather died once, six years ago, than dying little by little ever since.

Chase, however, was not him. The younger man had a melancholic attachment to life that wasn't exactly giddiness for living, but rather a desperate need to stay alive long enough to see what came next. Curiosity kept him ticking, House figured, and he believed that losing mobility in one of his legs wouldn't rob Chase of that quality. On the other hand, he'd been wrong about Chase before.

Which ever choice Chase would've made, House was sure of one thing. He wasn't going to chose for him. "Call his step mom," he finally said, throwing the tennis ball into a corner of his office and picking up his bag, "or flip a coin."

Cuddy could only stare as House passed by her to grab his coat on his way out. "Where are you going?"

"Home... need my beauty sleep," he said, closing the glass door behind him with enough force to rattle the whole office.

"Home..." Cuddy whispered, left alone in the dimly lit office. For the first time in a long time, she found herself discovering a flaw in House's character that she couldn't swallow.

House was a coward and she had just witnessed him running away with his tail between his legs.

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A.N - Damn... this was one hard chapter to write! Like a writer's block, only reversed, because instead of not knowing what to say, I wanted to say everything... let me tell you, the balance between too much and too little information is hard to manage and this sort of situation has been done sooooo many times before that is hard to come up with a different way to do it.

Even so, I feel that this chapter might have too many redundant parts, so I might be messing around with it some time later.

A special domo arigato! to Tamerlane for her precious help with the Japanese translations! Previous chapters have already been revised and corrected, both on the English and the Japanese, but keep in mind that to err is human and I'm a non-English speaking human, so, go easy :D

To all that have reviewed so far, I LOVE YOU ALL!!!! You guys have been great to me and are my driving force whenever I need a little push in to writing another page.


	10. Chapter 10

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CHAPTER X

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Cuddy could vaguely remember the board meeting in which the colour for the staff bathroom tiles renovation had been approved. It had been one of her firsts as Dean of medicine and all that she could recall was that choosing between grey, green and blue had seemed oh so important for her then. Those first days she'd been so eager to prove that she could make the right call, even if it was nothing more than bathroom tiles.

Now, years after the fact, she couldn't even remember what the final decision had ended up being, until she stepped in to one of the showers and turned the water on. Grey hadn't been such a bad choice, even though she wished for a cheerier shade right now. The bathrooms would look nice in yellow.

A limp string of lukewarm water hit her face. Maybe it was time to order some new shower-heads too.

She'd talked to Wilson. It had been a manipulative course of action but she wasn't sorry for it, not really. Cuddy knew that, alerted about House's actions, or lack of them, the gentle-hearted oncologist would go and talk with House, even if she had specifically asked him not too. It was the roles they usually played and even though each knew their part, they rarely failed to fulfil it. House was the ID, drove by his impulses of brilliancy and occasional stubbornness; she was the Super-Ego, having to play the forbidding parent figure that tried, and sometimes failed, to impose the limits; and it fell on Wilson to play the Ego's part, the mediator between the two of them. This time, however, she just wasn't sure if he would be able to achieve anything.

Inaction, no matter how appealing, was not an option. No matter what came out from Wilson's talk with House, she needed to make a decision on her own and hope for the best.

Cuddy bent her head down, allowing the meek flow of water to hit the back of her neck. Her muscles felt like hard rubber and a tension that she could not make go away was starting to give her a blinding headache.

For a feeble moment, she had even considered actually calling Chase' step mother. Half way through the long number that would connect her to Australia, Cuddy had hanged up the phone.

The only time that she'd heard about Cordelia Chase had been six months after Chase's father's death and even then, she'd only found out about the woman because House had shared with Stacy the real reason behind Chase's misdiagnose of the Kayla woman. The hospital's lawyer had felt obligated to share the story with her.

Her curiosity irked, Cuddy had later searched the late Dr. Chase on the internet. Rowan Chase had been a well known practitioner in his field and finding several articles about his work and related to his death hadn't been hard. Amidst these, a few news' clips of several social events were the only ones where Mrs. Chase could be found.

Cuddy was surprised to know that Rowan Chase, despite his reputation of a ladies-man, had only re-married less than a year before. She would've expected for his son to have attended the ceremony, but as far as Cuddy could remember, Chase hadn't taken enough time off to go home in over two years. In between the lines, Cuddy could such reaction as either a dismissal of his father's private life or a clear disapproval of the older Chase's decisions. None bode well for a possible relationship between Chase and his step-mother.

In the end, Cuddy couldn't bring herself to call a woman that had probably only seen Chase a couple of times before, assuming that she had even ever met him. What would Cuddy say to her? 'Hello, I'm calling about your stepson, the one that lives across the world and didn't bother to attend your wedding'?

She would be better of going to the street and asking the first person she encountered, or, as House had suggested, tossing a coin in the air and see what came out of that.

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"… _And in other news… the police authorities still refuse to make any sort of comment about the shoot-out in down-town Jersey this morning. Advance reports that the incident might have involved the Japanese Yakusa are still not confirmed, but local sources claim that a number of Asian victims were transported from here to the Princeton-Plainsboro hospital_…"

The sound of the news report on the television set woke Foreman. The neurologist opened one bleary eye and gaze sideways at the unfocused figure of a female reporter standing outside what looked like an Asian restaurant.

Foreman raised his head and straightened his body as he lazily leaned back against the blue couch. Another reporter was talking, a man this time, his figure neatly framed by the familiar front building of PPTH. "Stupid reporters!" He said, flicking the TV set off.

Only as he stared at his own reflection on the blank TV did Foreman realized that they were talking about the guys that had held Chase. It suddenly downed on to him what had happened to the other man, like seeing it in the news made it all look more real.

When Foreman had seen Chase in the ER he'd been surprise by his own lack of response to the sight. He'd expected to feel relief, sympathy or even concern for the other man, but instead he had found himself feeling nothing.

That realization alone had left him scared enough to escape the presence of the others as soon as he could, because when even House was capable of looking at Chase with concern in his eyes and he couldn't summon up one single feeling, what did that said about him?

The neurologist had taken refuge in the doctors' lounge, relived to find it empty at that hour of the mourning. It was time for rounds all over PPTH, so he figured that everyone else was busy at work. He'd lied down on the comfortable couch, keeping the TV on just to have a bit of background noise to distract him from his own thoughts.

The reporter's words were still ringing in his ears. Something about them had sounded utterly wrong to him. '_A number of Asian victims'_ she had said. And then he realized why that single phrase had irked him. She had it all wrong.

There had been only one victim in that whole situation, and he wasn't Asian at all.

The idea of labelling Chase as a victim was strange, completely foreigner in Foreman's view of the Australian. In some way, it would've been easier to deal with what had happened to Chase if he'd been just sick, or in an accident… even a mugging would've been preferable, because those were the sort of bad things that happened to average people everyday. You go out your door, you get hit by a car and the next thing you know, you're laying flat on a hospital bed.

Chase had gone out his door, gone to work and out of no where, had found himself shot and kidnapped by one of the world's most famous and oldest crime organizations. How does something like that happen to an average guy like Chase?

Foreman decided to do something that he always avoided doing at all costs, something that he always found a profound waste of time and a pointless exercise. He tried to put himself in Chase' shoes.

Alone, hurt, trapped in a situation that he couldn't possible understand, with people whose morals were dubious at best and with absolutely no idea about his chances of being rescued. He'd spent almost twenty hours in their hands and Foreman, like everyone else, had seen the bruises and the handcuff marks.

What did an experience like that did to a man?

He'd been in handcuffs once, when he'd been arrested by the cops. He could still remember the feeling of the cold steel against his wrists; of the ridiculous amount of time that the metal took to absorb his body heat and stop being so cold; of how, even when they were warmer, they still felt humiliating and heavy, burning against his skin, a dead weight dragging him away from freedom and society.

Foreman opened his eyes, surprised that they had been closed at all. Suddenly he didn't wanted to be in Chase' shoes anymore. Suddenly all that he could see was Chase's tired face as he stood by the glass partition, working his ass off to save his colleague from certain death.

Foreman felt himself flush from embarrassment. Chase had done his best to help him then, medically and personally, supporting his father and refraining from blaming Foreman for putting Cameron's life in jeopardy. If all he could do to help Chase was take a nap, then no matter how spoiled Foreman thought the Australian to be, he would still be a better man that him.

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"You're wet."

Wilson pushed his soaking hair out of his eyes and stared at the dry, warm and smirking man in front of him. "Yes… Rain does tend to have that effect on people without umbrellas."

House stood aside, letting his friend in to the dark apartment and disappeared in to the bathroom.

"You were playing the piano," Wilson shouted out as he peeled his wet jacket. "Sounded like a particularly depressing little thing."

House came back, throwing him a grey towel. "Tchaikovsky."

The oncologist grabbed the towel, mumbling a 'thanks' as he cleaned his face dry. "Thought you didn't like classics."

The older man sat behind the piano again. A glass filled with amber liquid rested on top of the open lid. House grabbed it, the two ice cubs inside rocking against the round walls as he downed a mouth full of whiskey. "What are you doing here?"

Wilson considered the advantages of lying now and slowly work his way around the matter first, before plunging in to the mouth of the lion. Taking in account the speed at which House was pouring himself another drink, he figured he might as well tackle the matter before the 'lion' was too drunk to be of any use. "I'm here to prevent you from doing something that you'll deeply regret."

House looked from the glass in his hand to the drown rat figure in front of him. "It's not like I've never drank this particular brand before… you sure I'll regret it?"

Wilson let out an exasperate sigh. "Chase is sick. He has an infection. You're an infection specialist. Why did you run away when Cuddy asked for your help?"

House placed the glass down, the sound of clinking ice cubs drowned by Tchaikovsky's notes once more. "Chase is sick because the human body isn't fond of having bullets in it," House clarified, turning angry eyes towards his friend, "and Cuddy didn't want my help, she wanted me to take the blame for her."

Wilson looked at the man that he knew almost as well as himself. Anger was not House's normal way of dealing with things. He was sarcastic, he was direct, he could even be caustic when pushed, but he was rarely angry. To be angry about something meant caring deeply enough to feel it. Anger was the polar opposite of love, drove from one extreme to the other by personal fear or betrayal from the loved one. Love and anger: one couldn't exist without the other.

In his slightly insane and twisted way, House was his worst towards those he loved. From personal experience, Wilson had been around long enough to feel 'loved' each time House decided to meddle with his personal affairs or lace his boxers with peppermint.

House might've failed to see it, but he did the same with Chase, only, because the Australian was his employee, the balance was not quite right and it came out looking just like plain harassment.

House let very few people come close enough to his heart and Wilson had soon realized that he'd won a very special lottery ticket regarding that. Chase, or so Wilson suspected, had sneaked on House's unsuspecting heart and had gain a spot for himself there too, without either men realizing or acknowledging it. It wasn't quite the 'father looking for a son' nor the 'son looking for a father' connection than one might assume to exist between them, but more of a shared orphanaged feeling that haunted them both, even if House's parents were still alive.

Chase had betrayed House before, and for reasons that Wilson still couldn't understand, House had forgiven the young man for that. And that left only… "You're afraid!" Wilson accused House. "Of what can you be afraid of? That he might die?"

House ignored him, playing with the keys of his piano. No, he wasn't afraid that Chase might die. Death was one of those things that he could little about, so worrying or being afraid of it was pointless.

"Then what? Are you afraid that he might change… that he'll blame you for this… that he'll go away?" Wilson kept on guessing and being ignored until he finally understood what had been in front of him the whole time.

The refusal to make a decision, the ignoring of the situation, the keeping himself away and doing nothing to help. It was almost as if House believed that Chase would be better off dead.

"You're afraid that he might turn in to you," Wilson whispered, the sudden weight of his own conclusions driving him to seat in the couch, regardless of his soggy pants.

House's blue eyes burned two holes in to Wilson's head, the effect made worse by the silence that issued from his frozen hands. "Get off my couch," he demanded, quickly turning his attention back to the keyboard.

From the way the other man was hammering each note, Wilson wondered how long that piano would last, fearing that he might be next. "I'm right, aren't I?"

Tchaikovshy effortlessly melted in to the main theme song from the Wizard of Oz.

Wilson looked at the piano playing man in confusion, knowing that somewhere in that transition was a message for him, but failing to see the connection. "My name is Dorothy and I've been hallucinating for the past hour and a half?" He ventured.

"No. Your name is Dorothy and I want you to click your ruby shoes and go away," House corrected, grabbing his cane and abandoning the piano stool, taking the glass with him. "The L Word is about to start and unless you want to stick around to find out exactly why I watch it, you'll better leave."

Wilson shook his head. "You know, the reason they're called regrets is because people can't take them back and God knows you have your share of them… don't add Chase to the list just because it's hard for you to deal with this," he said, retrieving his coat. "Having another limping doctor in the hospital I can deal with, but having you feeling miserable and blaming yourself for not doing anything, that I'm not sure the world is ready for."

House sat on his couch, refusing to acknowledge Wilson's words or his departure until he heard the front door closing. His gaze was fixed on the two ice cubs, dancing around each other inside his glass. The more they ran, the more they melted, proving the uselessness of trying to change the inevitable.

The diagnostician placed the glass on the small table in front of the TV, rubbing his fingers, numb from the cold glass, against his pants' legs.

The minute he'd turned his back on Cuddy, House knew exactly what her decision would be. It was as inevitable as the melting ice. She would fail to be objective and she would authorize a premature surgery, in the hopeful illusion that a miracle would happen, based solemnly on the belief that Chase was a decent guy that had gone through a terrible situation and, therefore, it wouldn't be fair on the High Powers' part to have him die on the operation's table.

She would forget that fairness isn't a medical specialty and she would watch Chase die in surgery, forever being plagued by the guilt of having killed him. She might even resign from her position as Dean of medicine.

House couldn't have that happening… a new Dean would mean having to learn how to manipulate a different person; on top of all the interviews he would have to do to find himself a new fellow…

House looked at his cold fingers, a smirk blossoming in his lips as he realized that the solution for all of his problems had been dancing in front of him the whole time.

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"How's he doing?" Cuddy asked as she pushed back the glass door to Chase's ICU room. Cameron was seating on a chair next to the sedate man, while Foreman leaned against the far wall.

"Fever' still high and his blood work shows no signs of the antibiotics' effects," Cameron replied, trying to focus her bloodshot eyes on the other woman. Was Cuddy's hair wet?

"I've talked with Dr. Herisson. He has an OR ready and waiting for Chase," Cuddy said, nearing the bed. There was a fine sheet of sweat all over Chase's face and his colour, despite the blood transfusions that he'd already received, was showing no signs of going past white.

"You're going ahead with the surgery?" Foreman's voice broke through her quiet inspection. "Is that wise?"

The Dean of medicine looked from one doctor to the other. "Got a better idea?" She challanged them. If Chase still had any chance of having a normal life after this, she didn't have the courage to rob him of that. She wondered if either of his colleagues would have.

"He's too weak to survive such a major intervention," Cameron said, finally finding her voice. "Why not give the antibiotics a little more time and do the surgery when he' stronger?" She questioned the other woman, noticing the uncertainty in Cuddy's eyes. "If this were any other patient, you would be the first to tell us to choose the safest course of action. Why are you denying it to him?"

Cuddy dropped the mask that she had so carefully constructed in front of the bathroom's mirror and grabbed Chase's limp hand, something that she knew she would never do if the young man was awake. "Have you ever looked in to the eyes of a man you've had any sort of feelings for and told him that his life will never be the same? Can you imagine the amount of pain that a single look can transmit?"

Cameron stood silent, studding the older woman, someone that she really didn't know. It was clear for the immunologist that Cuddy was talking about House. The similarities between the two situations weren't lost on her either. However, this was as close as Cuddy had ever come of admitting a past between her and House and Cameron was amazed that she had done it so willing and openly. "Yes, I have," she whispered, figuring by the confused look in Cuddy's face that the other woman had no idea about her late husband.

"You can't base your decisions in your own fear of the consequences," Foreman reminded them both, his voice less comprehensive than what Cameron could deal with at the moment.

"No, but basing them in actual medical facts might be neat and innovating," House' sarcasm caught them all by surprise. He didn't give them time to recover. "Cuddy's right, we need to get him to surgery... but not before a quick trip to the local freezer."

Three pairs of confused eyes stared at him, a kind of reaction that never got old for him. House notice Cuddy's guilty release of Chase's hand and the way Cameron stood straighter when she saw him. He wondered if they were getting ready for shooting him down or if the reactions had been nothing but renewed hope at hearing his words.

"You do realize that successful cryogenic is still a few years away?" Foreman's own sarcasm answered him back. Cuddy and Cameron seemed to have lost their abilities to rationalize, each seeing Chase as some sort of chance to redeeming themselves from whatever past ghosts that were haunting them, and House was plainly insane, probably trying to put to use some wild theory that he'd read in some dubious medical journal or sci-fi magazine. If no one would see to Chase's best interests, then he could at least do that for the Aussie.

"Duh! Who said anything about cryogenics?" House made a face at him, looking like a fifteen year old girl. All jest was out of his eyes when he spoke next. "I know how to, not only improve Chase's chances of surviving surgery, but also how to put a stop in the bacterial infection that's eating his leg… do you wanna seat here shooting crap in to the air or do you want to do something about it?"

Foreman gave him an exasperate look back, getting the feeling that somehow, no matter how bizarre House's idea turned out to be, he would end up agreeing.

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There is a reason why the human body has a stable core temperature, no matter how cold or how hot it is on the outside. And, like most things in the human body, it is a good reason.

Too much above normal temperature and the proteins in the blood cells and cellular walls cook, causing the organism to literally fall apart. Too much bellow normal temperature and all chemical reactions stop, systems slow down from lack of energy and the body eventually shuts down. Getting a body's core temperature to 87,8ºF was sure to do that.

House's theory was that if Chase's metabolism slowed down enough, so would the bacteria causing havoc in his system. And because the tiny cells of the guilty bacteria wouldn't be on life support, they, unlike Chase, would die.

The way Foreman saw it, House's idea was that killing Chase would cure him of his infection. Why hadn't anyone ever thought about that?

As far as insane ideas went, this one would probably qualify as one of House's most crazy ones. And yet, brilliant, in a Frankenstein-ish kind of way.

How no one had ever thought about it before could only be explained by the fact that insane people aren't usually allowed to take care of patients.

Cardio-thoracic surgeons had been doing it for awhile, lowering the body's temperature to such extent that the heart hardly beat during surgery. What no one had yet tried was doing it for a leg.

The observation room above that particular operation room would have been filled with medical students if Cuddy hadn't barred them entrance. Princeton-Plainsboro was, above all, a teaching hospital and as far as experimental surgical procedures went, this was surely one of a kind. But it was also Chase on the operating table. Cuddy wouldn't allow for the young doctor to be exposed like that to his future peers. Which meant that she, Cameron and Foreman had the front row for the green room bellow.

House had scrubbed up and joined Dr. Herisson in the OR, claming that it had been his idea after all, so he might as well put it in practice. There was no point in telling the other man that he only trusted him as far as he could throw him and that he wanted to be near in case anything went wrong.

The three doctors in the viewing room watched as Chase's body, with his back turned to them, was progressively cooled down, lowering his heart beat to nearly twenty beats per minute. The ventilator, which would make sure that his breathing would remain steady throughout the whole process, hissed and puffed in compass with the nurse's voice, reading of decreasing vitals.

The usual intensity and focus that was a part of any sort of surgery seemed denser as they worked on one of their own. The occasional joke or small talk was absent and even those who didn't knew the Australian doctor personally seemed intended on handling him as gently as possible.

Herisson had seemed truly sorry when he informed House that a small part of the muscle had already started to grow necrotic and that he would have to cut it away, in order to prevent Chase from losing the entire use of his biceps femoris muscle.

House had just nodded, aware that the other man wasn't asking for his permission. It was his job and House wasn't about to mess with that.

He was there for what came next, for the part that he knew would be scarier in this whole procedure, the part when, after removing the bullet and the dead tissue and after fixing the broken bone, they would start to rewarm Chase's body and hope that everything responded well to their meddling.

House found himself holding his breath with the others as he looked at the heart monitor and watched Chase's heart struggle to return to normalcy, felt as his skin started to lose its eerie icing feeling, heard as the ventilator kept its pace. Chase's curiosity for life would keep him alive to discover what came next and despite all odds, Dr. Herisson peeled his bloody gloves off, declaring with a confident smile that the operation was a success.

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Thomas never woke up. He was dreaming of home, a dream so intense that he could feel the ocean's breeze on his skin and smell that distinct odour of sand and salt that only the beach could produce.

The woman, dressed as a nurse, looked at the sleeping man, wondering about what could've brought such a content smile to his lips. She would never know, and he would never tell, about his dream or anything else. Casting one last look at the guard standing near the door looking at her, she emptied the syringe's contents in to Thomas' blood stream, watching carefully as the happy smile effortlessly dissolved in to a peaceful mask of death.

A small box connected to Thomas monitor assured that his vitals would remain stable and normal, a pre-recorded illusion of life that would guarantee his killer time enough to leave his room and proceed with her work. The Yakusa had paid her to kill two more and she hadn't failed to meet a contract to its full yet. She smiled at the guard as she left Thomas room, made a comment on the terrible raining weather and asked him to make sure that no one disturbed the patient' sleep.

Hours went by until anyone realized that Thomas wasn't sleeping anymore and that the two members of Kazumasu's group that were unconscious in the OR's recovery room would never be regain consciousness ever again.

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All the others had finally gone home to sleep in their own beds as House stood outside the ICU glass walls, watching Chase sleep. Wilson reflection joined his in silence.

"Do you think they have racoons in Australia?" House asked the other man.

Wilson looked at him, his eyebrows joined in one giant question mark. "I have no idea… dare I ask why you want to know?"

But as he looked at the man occupying the single bed in the ICU room, Wilson couldn't help but see the resemblance. With the almost black bruises under his closed eyes and his pale face, Chase did looked a bit racoon-ish. The oncologist shook his head. "How can you even say that about the guy while he's lying there unconscious?" Wilson said, his brown eyes darting between House and Chase.

"Because he looks like one right now… say, does you cell phone take pictures?"

Wilson shook his head with a smile. It was a good sign to see House returning to his usual snark. "Quit stalling… are you gonna get inside or not?" He asked, one hand already on the door.

"Not. Have a couple of errands to do," House replied, leaning both hands on his cane and gently rocking back and forth as he cast one last look at Chase before turning and leaving.

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A.N: I admit... this story wasn't as well revised as it should've been (shame on me) but in the mean time I've put my laziness to rest and did a better search for mistakes. I'm sure that some might've still escaped, but its a bit better now. Sorry to those who've already read the poorly revised version. Don't forget to review!


	11. Chapter 11

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CHAPTER XI

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Father Bishop would often joke that with a name like his, he would never feel the need to aspire to a higher position inside the Church's ranks. Chase would smile and in return tell him that with a name like his, he would always be pursuing something, forever unsatisfied with what he had.

Father Bishop never realized that his young pupil was talking serious until the day that Chase told him that he was leaving the seminary. The disappointment in his wrinkled face was something that Robert would never forget.

He would've received his first Orders in less than a month, but instead of the black robes, Chase had bent to his father's will and chosen the white ones.

The old clergyman, who had been to him more of a father than his own father had ever been, had blessed his choice with sadness in his eyes. He had grabbed Chase's hand and had placed a silver coin in his palm, telling Robert that when he was done with chasing his windmills, he would be there, waiting for his return.

He'd been wrong. Chase would never be the prodigal son, nor was he a Don Quixote to be chasing anything. He'd run away from God, just like he ran away from his father and his influence, leaving behind his own country and everyone he knew, everyone that knew about the wrong choices that he'd made.

His name couldn't be more wrong. He wasn't a chaser, he was a runner and his name was nothing more than fate having a laugh at his expense.

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He was still running. Chase could feel the burn in his muscles as his legs worked faster and faster to carry him away from whatever was chasing him.

He cast one quick look behind, but all that he could see was darkness, a deep and dense black veil that seemed about to engulf him. He ran harder, until there was nothing but the soft beeping in the background, matching the feeling of his heart pumping wildly inside his chest and the pain in his leg muscles each time his feet stomped the ground.

He was tired of running, he was breathless, and drowning in his own sweat, but still couldn't bring himself to stop. Each time he'd tried to, the darkness would reach out and touch him, grab his arm, his leg, touch his hair. Chase flinched away from its cold touch and ran away, not looking to where he was going. There seemed to be no where to go.

The blade came out of no where, or maybe the darkness had sent it up ahead, to catch him unaware. He never saw it coming until the steal cut through his chest and pierced his heart.

Chase opened his eyes to a different kind of darkness, even if the soft beeping still lingered, sounding less soft now that it was racing.

"Dr. Chase… calm down, I'm going to get Dr. Herisson for you," a woman's voice imposed herself over the maddening beeps.

Chase blinked, trying to get his unfocussed eyes to work. All that he could see was a vague white uniformed female shape, pressing buttons in the monitor above him. The beep disappeared.

Chase gave up on trying focusing his surroundings and closed his eyes again. Whoever Dr. Herisson was, he was feeling too tired to wait for him.

As the muffled feeling started to ebb away from his thoughts, Chase quickly realized where he was. He'd worked often enough in the ICU of PPTH to recognize the display of monitors and machines that usually cluttered those rooms. How he had ended up there was utterly lost to him.

The final minutes of the last time he remembered being conscious pushed their way to the front of his mind, proudly parading like they were something worthy of remembrance. Chase would've rather had a case of selective amnesia. Maybe he could force his mind to erase everything and reboot itself to the last weekend, when he'd sat in front of his TV, falling asleep as he watched how to properly prepare a dish of codfish.

But it wasn't the cooked fish that he remembered. Instead, he could recall with detailed accuracy all that had happened until the police broke in to that basement. He could still feel the sword's blade slicing through his chest, he could still smell the sweat and cigar smoke, could still hear his pitiful cries of pain.

"Dr. Chase?"

Chase opened his eyes, squinting against the overall light that had been turned on. There was a man standing over him, a doctor in his mid fifties. He'd seen him a couple of times in the corridors of the hospital.

"I'm Dr. Herisson, the surgeon that operated on you," the other man clarified. "How are you feeling?"

Chase felt numb, disconnected from his own body. He tried poking his left leg, remembering the bullet inside it. All of sudden, an intense fear that his leg was no longer there overtook him. The fact that he couldn't feel it, move it or even use his left hand to search for it, quickly aggravated his panic. He felt a hand gently grip his left arm and tensed.

Dr. Herisson figured that, if Dr. Chase remembered anything about what had happened to him, his leg would be his major concern. The fact that he was feebly trying to touch his bandaged leg with a cast-enveloped hand was all the proof he needed of that. "I know this is all a bit disorienting right now, but you have to try not to move that much," the surgeon's voice sounded gentle and understanding. "I'll give you all the details when you're more alert, but for now I can tell you that we've fixed the broken bone in your leg and that with proper care and the right physiotherapy, you should make a full recovery."

It wasn't exactly the truth, but it was what the young man needed to hear at the moment. He could feel the arm beneath his hand staring to relax almost immediately and when he looked up, Herisson could see his patient's eyes struggling to remain open. He finished checking Chase's vitals and finally closed the light, plunging the room back in to a blue tinged darkness. He had a son about Dr. Chase's age. Suddenly, he felt an intense need to get his son on the phone and make sure that he was alright. "Call Dr. Cuddy and the folks in the Diagnostic's department," he asked the nurse as they exit the room, both nodding to the two guards posted outside the intensivist's room. "Tell them that he's coming around."

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After the hellish past two days, Cuddy had made sure that everything was under control and had driven home, dreams of bubble baths and at least twelve hours sleep in her own bed keeping her awake until she reached her destination.

As it was, she managed her bubble bath but fate robbed her of the twelve hours. She'd been asleep for only two hours when her phone rang, calling her back to the hospital.

Had it been any other thing she might've felt compelled to send them all to hell and hope that the hospital she was responsible for was still standing in the morning. But the words that were dumped in to her half-asleep ears were, at very least, catastrophic.

If there were two things you avoided at all cost in the hospital you ran, it was insurmountable debts and large numbers of patients dying mysteriously.

She arrived at the front desk twenty minutes later, surprising a few workers that had never seen her without makeup or with her hair any thing but perfect. The dark bags under her eyes would've put to shame most students on finals' week.

Cuddy went directly to the OR's recovery room. "What the hell happened here?" She asked one of the nurses standing outside the room.

Inside, a number of policemen where dusting and collecting several medical equipments. The two patients who had died there were already inside white body bags.

"Their vitals were normal," the young woman explained, making it sound like the hundredth time that the same words had left her mouth. "Monica and I went to change their bandages and we noticed that they were dead. Just dead."

Cuddy shook her head. That was an impossible scenario. A million different alarms sounded when a patient's condition started to deteriorate, vitals started to decline before things changed for the worse, stable patients don't kick off on will power alone. Either the two nurses had screw up and were covering each other or something very bizarre was happening in her hospital.

"People don't just die like that," Cuddy confronted the nurse in front of her. To her credit, the woman looked more confuse than guilty. She too had no idea about what had happen. "Who where the patients?"

"Jon Kuong and a Kim Tappur," a uniformed policeman joined them, reading from his notepad. "And they didn't just die, they were murdered, along with a Thomas Joyce."

Cuddy eyed the man who had introduced himself as Officer Svan, looking above his shoulder to the room beyond. Those men had been under police surveillance, monitored by a number of hospital staff, inside a room with glass walls… "That's impossible!"

"So did we thought as well, but the killer had access to some pretty handy devices, like this one," the policeman said, handing a small black box to Cuddy.

"I have no idea what this is," she replied, turning the small object in her hands in search of an angle that might miraculously transform the foreign thing in to something familiar.

"That is a recorder, specially designed to store all the settings of any ordinary hospital monitor and later mimic them in perfection, convincing the monitor that the patient remains perfectly healthy."

Cuddy wasn't listening anymore. The news that Thomas Joyce had died alongside the two patients in the surgery recovery room had finally registered inside her tired brain and the connection was immediate. "Oh, my God! Dr. Chase... as anyone checked how he is?"

The policeman grabbed her arm, stopping her from effectively racing towards the other man's room. "It was the first place we checked. He's fine, or so your nurses tell me... who ever target these three men didn't have Dr. Chase on the list."

Cuddy sighed in relief and then quickly lowered her head, trying to hide her reaction. It didn't feel right to have the Dean of medicine of the hospital where three men had just been murdered having a reaction like that, no matter how happy she was about the fact that Chase had been spared. It would be next to impossible dealing with his loss now that they had fought so hard to have him back. "Is there anything that we can do?" She asked the policeman, slipping in to the comfort zone of being in charge.

The man in front of her flipped his notepad close and stored it inside his breast pocket. "Two of my colleagues are already posted outside Dr. Chase's room. I need you to provide them with a list of authorized personal to get inside that room. Keep the list short and if possible, see that each name comes with a picture of the person," he asked. "Whoever did this is not likely to return, but we'll take every precaution to assure Dr. Chase' safety."

Cuddy nodded, sadly realizing that if the same sort of precautions had been taken previously, Thomas and these men would still be alive.

The policeman seemed to read her expression. "The guard that was posted outside Mr. Joyce's room couldn't have guessed that the killer would make himself pass as hospital personal... we should've thought about that possibility."

But they hadn't, because those men had been criminals, Cuddy could hear the words that the policeman had left unspoken. Like her relief over being those three men and not Chase who had died, that had been a decision that the policeman could no longer do anything about. "I'll get you the list as soon as I can."

"Thank you," the policeman said, shaking her hand.

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Cuddy had forced them all to go home after it became clear that Chase was out of danger. Cameron's conscience had struggled with her feebly, arguing that Chase shouldn't be left alone, but it was quickly overcome by the intensity of her weariness.

The immunologist had found herself crying inside her shower stool with little idea of how she had ended up there. Sleeping that night had been an almost mechanical thing, a switch going off and plunging her in a deep state of unconscious that ended only with the high pitch screams of her alarm clock.

Cameron woke with the sun warming her face and listening to the birds chirping outside her window. She felt happy for exactly ten seconds before the events of the past two days rushed back to her and the intrusive ball of worry inside her stomach returned.

She drove back to the hospital on auto-pilot, forcing herself to stop in the usual café to buy breakfast, making sure that she dropped by her department first, instead on running straight to the ICU like she wanted. If things were to ever get back to normal, she might as well start acting normal as soon as possible.

The Diagnostic's department was empty when she had arrived there, blinds still closed since the previous day. Cameron had placed her computer bag on the table and moved to hang her coat by the door. A dark leather jacket was already there, a faint layer of dust gathered on its shoulders and neck. Chase's jacket, the one he'd left behind on that day because he'd thought it was too hot to take it with him to Thomas's house.

Cameron took the jacket of its hanger and gently brushed the dust away, feeling the tears already forming in her eyes again. Chase had left the jacket behind in the certainty that he would be back later that day to collect it. The thing had hanged there all week and she hadn't even noticed it.

Dropping all pretences of normalcy, she hanged her coat next to Chase's and made her way to the ICU.

Technically, she knew that Chase wouldn't wake until they decided that it was safe to lift off the sedation. Still, every time she would reach his room, Cameron hoped to find him with his eyes open.

The notion that he might've died had stirred the weirdest of feelings inside her and suddenly she found herself earning for little silly things, like hearing the sound of his voice, wanting to know who his best friend was back in Australia, if he had any pets when he was younger. She wanted him to open his eyes and look at her again with that mix of lost boy and mischievous devil like he sometimes did, she wanted to look at the colour of his iris and finally decide if they were green with bits of blue or if it was the other way around. She wanted to ask him why he had so many faces and she wanted him to show her his real one.

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Cameron had read the same line for the fifth time but still had no idea what that article was about. She decided it was time to give up and promptly closed her laptop. The clock's long fingers looked like they hadn't moved at all since she'd arrived there. It had been the same thing ever since they had entered that sort of limbo of waiting for Chase to wake up.

Three days had passed since his surgery, four days since he had arrived at the ER, five days since she'd last talked with him. Cameron couldn't even recall what her last words to him had been.

They had no new patients and Cameron suspected that either Cuddy or House, or even both, was working to keep things that way. Foreman had been spending his days in between the clinic and the ER, dropping by once in awhile to check on Chase and ask if they had a patient. House would spend large portions of the day away, busy with some private project that he wouldn't tell her. When he was there, he still made himself invisible, keeping himself busy with his games or preventing Wilson from working.

The phone ring shook Cameron from her thoughts, calling her back to reality. Cameron looked around, hoping to find someone else available to pick it up. She was alone. Again. "Yes?"

The voice on the other end was unfamiliar, but the words she spoke were the ones Cameron had been waiting to hear for the past few days. "Thank you," she replied, carefully replacing the phone's receiver on its cradle. Her feet already knew more than well their way to Chase's room, but still her legs refused to move. As much as she wanted him awake, with him asleep she could still pretend that he was the same man, pretend that what had happen to him would not change him. To face him awake was to confront her pretences with reality and she was afraid of what might come out of that confrontation.

Cameron decided that that was something that she wouldn't be able to face alone. Instead of the ICU, she went in search of Foreman and House to give them the news and hoped that they wouldn't realize that she wasn't being nice to them. She was being a coward to Chase.

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House looked at the set of keys in his hands, wondering what he would find behind the closed door as he remembered his conversation with detective Bree a couple of hours before.

He'd left PPTH to search Bree, curious to know how they had managed to find the whereabouts of his lost kangaroo. Bree had told him about the visit Kazumasu had paid to Chase's apartment and how that simple unforeseen act had led them to the place where the intensivist was being held. What had possessed the Yakusa man to risk exposure like that was anyone's guess and being dead, it was unlikely that he would ever answer their questions.

House's guess was that Chase had had something to do with it. The boy had always been kind of smart.

Like Bree had told him, if Kazumasu believed that the hidden file was in Chase's house, he would've begun his searches there, and not waste a whole night before going. Acting the way he had, it could only mean that someone had later convinced him that the file had been hidden there.

House could bet a month's pay that Chase had made up a bogus location just to get the Asian man off his back. He could also bet that the bruises and cuts he had seen in the younger man's body were either the result of not coming up with that lie sooner, or the result of being caught lying.

He had planned to squeeze the detective for the information and then leave, but when Bree asked him if he wanted to take Chase's belongings with him, instead of the Australian waiting until the detective went to talk to him, House had found himself nodding. What was left of Chase's clothing would remain in the police's custody as evidence, but his wallet and his car and house keys were no longer necessary.

After a promise of calling the policeman when Chase was well enough to talk to him, House had drove to Chase's apartment. He'd been there one time before, when the young man's old car had finally passed away and Chase had shyly asked him for a ride. In exchange for a week's worth of clinic hours, House had taken him as far as the building's front door.

House figure that as long as he was there, he might as well see what was left of Chase's place and grab him a few things that, sooner or later, he would need in the hospital.

By the amount of time the Australian spend on the roof of the PPTH, House wasn't surprised to find that his apartment was on the last floor of the six stories' building. Fortunately for him, there was an elevator.

The apartment's door opened effortlessly in to a relatively debris-free hall. Beyond that, chaos and mayhem.

From the lobby, House could see most of the small apartment. The leaving room that opened in to the kitchen area, the bedroom, bathroom and a closed door on the opposite side.

He steeped carefully, avoiding the broken lamps and couch stuffing on the floor. Chase would need a new one of those. CD's and random pages of various books graced the floor and whatever piece furniture that was still upright, white sheets of paper decorating everything like dry leafs.

House moved further inside, carefully pushing the bedroom door open with the tip of his cane. The bed mattress had been gutted, for lack of a better word, and the bed's framing had landed against the side wall, managing to miss the window but being successful in breaking it anyway. Even the floor in that division hadn't escaped the savagery. The wooden tiles had been pulled apart, revealing the grey concrete underneath.

Amidst the hurricane of broken items, a guitar resting against Chase's night stand had stayed unscathed, a lonely survival who, for that reason alone, drove House to pick it up.

The twelve strings acoustic had the feel and looks of having been around for awhile. The guitar's wooden body was scratched and even chipped in some points, but the strings were all new. Black inked little figures had been added along the back of the guitar's neck, telling House that this was more than a musical instrument, it was a piece of sentimental value.

Clothes were scattered all over the room, but not a single pajamas in sight. His initial idea of taking something personal for Chase to wear during his stay at PPTH was quickly put aside. House wasn't ready to go wandering around Chase's drawers nor did he want to pass up the fun opportunity of forcing the young man to wear one those horrible hospital gowns. He had to wear one after all; he could think of no reason why Chase shouldn't go through the same sort of embarrassment.

A quick trip to the smashed bathroom proved to be just as pointless. Apparently Chase was still all Crocodile Dundee about his shaving habits, preferring a blade over a razor machine. With a busted hand, House doubted that the Australian would be able to use a blade in the near future. House wandered if Chase was old enough to shave at all, which would rend all of his mental discussion pointless.

He was about to declare his visit to Chaseland over, when the closed door called to his curiosity. From what he had seen on the rest of the apartment, Chase was boringly generic about his stuff, apparently choosing things more for their functionality than their appeal, like the murdered couch who could also be used as a bed, or the coffee table which could also be used as a bar, even if Chase's was empty. The few pictures that he'd seen lying around, some of them tore beyond recognition, looked too recent, probably taken after he came to the US.

Search as he may, House couldn't find evidences of a pre-PPTH life for Robert Chase. And that closed office had all the potential for storage room of all of Chase's skeletons in the closet.

He limped to the room, clicking the light on before going inside and found himself slightly surprised for what he found there. He had expected a shrine painted in red and evil naked goddess with candlesticks hanging from their breasts; he had expected snap shots of Cuddy or Cameron in their underwear, taken from some tree branch overlooking their bedroom's windows; he had even been prepared for snap shots of him or Foreman with dart marks all over their faces; he had not expected art.

Several canvases of all sizes lay against the wall, across the floor or even hanging from the wall. An assortment of colours in oil, watercolours and even what looked to him like coloured pencil, covered the once white surfaces of every single canvas and, although some were ruined beyond repair, House was amazed with how good they looked.

House's eyes landed on a landscape painting that was hanging from the wall to the right, a green and blue depicture of what looked like the Sydney harbour, and searched the right side bottom corner for a signature. The letters C.C. were stylishly painted in black, beautifully merging with the rest of the drawing. He searched the rest, finding more M.C signatures as well as a R.C., whose style was slightly different but still beautiful.

At first the diagnostician figured that Chase's family, being wealthy, had decided to support some raising artist back in Australia and that Chase had brought back his fair share of paintings when he'd move to the States. It was only when he came upon an unfinished piece of a sea landscape that House made the connection. R and C were clearly Chase's initials, which meant that he had painted half of those art pieces.

House wondered if M.C. was a pseudonym of the Australian too or of someone in his family who used to paint as well. A dark portrait of a beautiful young blonde woman with sad eyes, who bore a sticking resemblance to Chase, called his attention. Chase didn't have any sisters, which meant that that was probably his mother. Confirming the signature once again, House wondered if Chase had painted it while she was still alive or from memory.

This new side of the Australian intrigued House, but also provided the best explanation for some of the things that he had never been able to figure about Chase.

Like that quiet, observant aspect of Chase's personality that didn't add to the rest of his demeanour. To anyone looking from the outside, Chase might've some times come across as cocky and too filled with bullshit; on closer inspection, he seemed rather disconnected and aloof. Neither had ever seemed quite right to House and now, knowing that Chase probably viewed everything and everyone in his life through an artist's eye, House wonder if the quietness and the cockiness were nothing but side effects of someone who analysed everything around him and felt things too deeply to react to them immediately.

House turned off the light and closed the door once again, thinking that if that was how Chase usually responded to things in his life, how long would it take him to react to the events of the past days?

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"... and the only reason we decided it was best to cast the wrist was as a precaution, taking in account the fact that you'd already broken it once before."

Dr. Herisson had been talking for quite some time now, but the only words that Chase had been able to register were that the wound on his chest would leave a scar and that the only way of knowing if there would be no lingering effects of the gunshot wound was after he started rehab, which he couldn't start until he was strong enough to stand on his own. After that he had caught random words about healing concussions, changing bandages and Foley catheters removals.

He wasn't really paying attention, even though he knew that he should. His leg was hurting and even though he understood the doctor's reasoning that feeding his body with more morphine might've cause addiction, in times like these, he just wished they would dope him up and save him the trouble of worrying about after effects.

Chase felt bad about himself. Rationally, he knew that he should feel good about the fact that he'd faced impossible odds and survived, but he couldn't act rationally about the whole experience. All that he could feel, all that he could process was what the surgeon hadn't said.

The possibility that he might never regain full use of his left leg was there, no matter how small Dr. Herisson tried to make her. Chase knew that he'd been lucky far beyond reason, but he was a long way from feeling lucky. These people had taken something from him and now he faced the possibility of his life never being the same again. And all for what? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Chase shook his head and tried to pay attention to what the other doctor was saying.

"You're white cells count is looking good, as are your vitals, so we might be moving you to a private room later today," Herisson finished with a smile. "I'll be around if you need me."

The Australian watch him slide the glass doors open and nod to the guard posted outside. He had asked Herisson about that and, although reluctantly, the other man had told him about the murder of Thomas and the two Asian men.

The news hadn't surprised Chase. What had surprised him was the feeling of satisfaction and sense of fair retribution that had invaded his heart. He was glad that those men were dead.

One week before he would've been shocked to hear about such an act of violence, inside a hospital of all places. One week before he might've even condemned the society' structure that allowed for such a thing to happen. One week before he wouldn't have paid that much attention to the fact. One week ago he was like any other person.

The notion that his reactions had been changed and that he could feel anything resembling pleasure about a man's death were both frightening and disgusting to him.

Cameron had chosen that particular moment to arrive to his room. When Herisson had confessed to her what he had just told Chase, both had been quick to assume that his distress was caused by fear of being killed as well. None had made the assumption that he'd changed, that he was a monster now. Chase hadn't had the courage to tell them otherwise.

Cameron had stayed behind that time, like she did most days. She would talk and he would nod, she would push him to tell what he was thinking and he would claim that he was tired and needed to sleep. Most of the times, he would just skip the first two parts of their repeat performance and pretend that he was asleep already when she arrived.

Foreman had come once, looking awkward and out of place, which had its own sense of irony, because he'd been wearing his white coat and it was hard for a doctor to manage to look out of place inside a hospital's room. He was trying to care, but Chase could see that the feeling didn't come naturally to him and would be gone by the time he was able to stand and walk.

House hadn't been there, or at least, Chase hadn't seen him there, but there were little things that made him wonder if the older man hadn't been around when he was actually sleeping. Like the electric razor that had magically appeared in his stuff, the one that no one knew where it'd came from but that had come in handy when Chase had started to feel like a modern days caveman; or the horrible koala bear that Cameron had given him, the one that he couldn't confess to abhor but had been glad to see mysteriously disappear.

Cuddy had been around a couple of times too, always arriving with some professional reason to be there, like hospital insurance issues or down time schedules, always dropping the façade five minutes later when she allowed her eyes to soften and her hand found its way to Chase's un-cast arm without her even noticing.

The Australian had tensed the first time that had happened, strange to the concept of someone that had always been nothing but his boss, showing that amount of care for him. It had felt alien and it had become welcomed and even longed for after the first times.

Cameron was afraid to touch him, always looking at him like he was about to break. The nurses and Dr. Herisson touched him, but it was always impersonal and cold. Cuddy's soft hand with its feathery touch was proving to be his only connection with the Human race, a connection that he was slowly realizing that he still needed above anything else.

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A short man with red hair who presented himself as detective Max Bree was Chase's first visit after his move to a private room. Cameron and Cuddy had already warned him about the policeman's arrival, but still it was something of a shock to meet the man who had saved his life.

"I owe you thanks," the Australian greeted the other man, gingerly trying to seat on his bed using only one hand.

Bree shrugged it off as he pushed a chair over, pretending not to see the other man' struggles, knowing enough to restrain himself from offering unwanted help.

The blonde man looked a lot better than the last time he had saw him, being carted away towards an ambulance. "I was told that you were feeling well enough to look at some pictures," he probed, opening his briefcase.

Chase nodded, shivering as he finally managed to seat against the bed rest, having lost the comforting warmth of the bedcovers. The room's temperature was controlled by the central air conditioner and the Australian noticed the detective's eyes staring at the goosebumps on his skin.

"I can come back later," Bree offered.

"No… I'm fine," Chase said, willing his skin to act accordingly to the 87º degrees of the room. "It's an after effect of this procedure that they had to use for…" he trailed off. The policeman hadn't come there to listen to that. "Can I see those?"

Bree handed him the pile of headshots from various men connected to the Yakusa's cells in the US, hoping that the Australian might identify a few of the ones that they hadn't been able to catch in the restaurant's raid. For the sake of fairness, he'd thrown in a few that had nothing to do with the crime organization and some that were involved but that Dr. Chase was not suppose to recognize. Like Thomas' photo. House had pointed out during his visit that Dr. Chase had never met the man, but Bree needed more than his gut feelings and the victim's boss word on that. "I need you to separate them in to those you've seen before and those you haven't," he instructed.

It was an entranced reading watching the emotions fly by the younger man's face as he carefully looked at each picture. He could see the occasional bite of the lower lip, usually a sign of indecision; the scrunching of the nose, as if a particular bad smell had hit him; the stressful push back of the hair that kept failing over his eyes; the eye lashes battling over the resolution of staring longer at this or that face, before placing it either on the right or the left side of his lap.

Bree was trying to figure which pile was which when the young man placed the last picture and looked up at him. His eyes were bloodshot and the detective couldn't tell if that had been from the effort of catching the faces' every detail or from trying to hide any stronger reaction to the ones that he did knew.

"These are the ones I recognize," the young man said, handing him the smallest pile.

Bree scanned the faces in his hands. They were fewer than what he'd hoped for and most of them were already lying in the city's morgue. "Jon Kuong," he said, showing Chase the glooming face of Apron Guy. "He was the owner of the restaurant where you were being held."

"It was a restaurant?" Chase asked surprised. He'd always figure it was just some random storage house in the middle of nowhere. "Sushi place?" He ventured, remembering the smell of fish that was his most intense memory of the place.

The detective nodded. "Kim Tappur," he showed next, deciding to start by the ones that were already dead and, therefore, could pose as no threat to the Australian. "Hired muscle, Kazumasu's handy man."

Chase looked at the smirking face of Big Guy. The man really had the smirk on his face all the time, even when it was the police behind the camera.

"Aiko Kazumasu," Bree said, holding the dead Japanese man's photo in his hand, "and his son, Atsuko Kazumasu."

Nice Suit's photo was from some social event and the man looked, as Chase had come to know him, pristine in his tailored suit. The younger man in the next shot bore some resemblance to his dead father, particularly in his cold eyes, but the intensivist recognized him mostly as the man who had shot him. "Kazumasu kept asking me about something that Thomas Joyce had hidden from him... do you have any idea what he was talking about?"

Bree sighed. That had been his greatest defeat in the whole matter, the fact that although in possession of information that he knew to be important to fight the Yakusa's presence in the US, he could do nothing with it. Try as they might, the police experts couldn't find a way to access the information without the port that Thomas had designed to open the file, and with Thomas dead, they had no way of knowing where that port might be. "Our way in to the Yakusa's organization."

Bree explained to Chase what the problem with the file was, more to satisfy the curiosity that the young man seemed to demonstrate than in actual belief that he might have any information about the matter.

The thoughtful look that gripped the Australian's eyes when he showed him the last picture of another Asian young man, one that they knew to have joined Kazumasu's group fairly recently, made Bree think otherwise. "You remember anything in particular about this man?" He pressed on, seeing that whatever was happening inside the doctor's brain, he wasn't willing to put in to words.

Chase looked at the face of the young man that had almost found him when he was hidden inside the closet of Thomas' spare room all those days ago. It had been the beginning of the end, the final sense of security before everything went wrong.

The Australian could recall with painful accuracy the way the soft light had come in to play to keep him hidden inside that mouldy smelly closet, the way he had pressed his back against the few items of clothing hanging from the rail, the way he had felt something push back against him, a box shape hurting his back. "The closet," he finally said.

Bree was looking at him, looking completely lost on the meaning of his words. "The closet?"

Chase looked down at his cast wrist, fingers of the left hand playing with the finger oximeter in the right one. "You already know what I was doing inside Thomas' house, right?" He tested, wanting to know what sort of trouble he would find himself in if he went on.

The detective nodded. "Dr. House filled us in on his... unusual methods of research. Did you find anything of relevance there?" He asked, admitting that, after his men had searched the entire place top to bottom and found nothing, if this man's next words were that he had found something, he would be tearing off some heads when he went back to his department.

Chase told him about the impression he had felt in the closet. "At the time I thought nothing of it, but now, I find it kind of strange for those old clothes to have had anything that solid left in their pockets," he said, looking at the confused look the detective was giving him. "I mean, people forget things in their pockets all the time, but it's usually things small enough to not jump to your recollection or soft enough that you might miss their presence all together, right?"

The confusion in Bree's face melted in to a genuine smile. The Australian could actually have a point. "We'll give it a look... in the mean time, Officer Terrence is going to remain here," he said, pointing to the large African-American guard outside. "It's not likely for whoever killed Kazumasu's men to return for you, because if they didn't see you a threat before, they will not change their minds now, but on the safe side, I feel better to know that you're being watched over."

Chase nodded a whispered 'ok'. It felt a little like hearing that the cancer that was killing you is in remission, but we'll keep following you for the rest of your life because we're not sure it will remain like that.

The plastic chair creaked as the detective got up to leave. A callous hand appeared in Chase field of vision and he hurried to shake it.

"When you feel ready for it, I will need you to come to the precinct so that we can file your recount on what happen," Bree said, fishing his pocket for a white card.

The Australian looked from the printed card with the detective's name to the man's face. "I can give it to you now."

Bree shook his head. He'd seen the young man's reaction to the photos and he was aware that a hospital's bed was not the best place to tell the events that had led the person to lie in said hospital bed. There was no rush in the matter. Most of the group had been caught or killed in the police's raid and the few that had gotten away had been ID-ed. There was no point in subjecting the obviously distressed young man to the pointless trial of relieving his abduction. "I can wait."

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Chase couldn't wait. After Bree had left, Chase found himself staring at the pale yellow wall that supported the two windows to the world outside his room, windows that were there only for the sake of light and could never be open to let the fresh air inside.

The two dimensional faces of the Yakusa men that Bree had shown him were still burned to his eyes, shifting from Polaroid's to their three dimensional portraits, complete with smell and sense of touch.

The Australian longed for fresh air, for a breath was didn't taste like hospital disinfectant or fish.

He had looked at the wheelchair that had been parked near his bed and once the decision entered his mind, he had no choice but to make it happen or otherwise go insane.

"I thought that Herisson had put the ppb restriction on you," House's voice broke the sound of the wind.

Chase didn't turned, quietly listening to the other man's progress across the gravel of the PPTH rooftop. "He did."

Step, clanck, step. Step, clank, step. Silence.

"You do know that ppb restriction means you're only entitled to get out of bed for piss, poo and bath, right?"

"No. Figured it meant piss, poo and balcony," Chase answered, leaning against the crutch under his right arm.

House carefully watched the young man before reaching him. Someone had actually found him a set of surgical scrubs to replace the hospital's gown, but even those were not enough to stop the early Autumn chill to reach Chase' skin. Had no one told him that he'd almost died because of a stupid infection?

A part of him wanted to club the Australian in the head and take him back inside where it was warm and where he wasn't jeopardizing all the work that they had had. The rest of him was curious to know what had possessed Chase to leave the safety of his room, venture meeting half the hospital' staff has he cruised the corridors in a wheelchair and suffer the pain of climbing a set of stairs just to get outside. "Thinking about jumping?"

"Planning on catching me?"

"Can't. Doctor's orders: no heroic acts while taking drugs," he answered, promptly fishing his prescription bottle from the jacket's pocket and mouthing a white pill. "Want one?"

Chase sighed, finally turning to face the older man. "What are you doing here?"

"Your boyfriend called," he said, pointing towards the tall policeman that stood at a discrete distance from them. "He was worried that you might catch a cold and prolong his boring assignment for an extra week."

A siren whined at a distance, the silence between the two men allowing them to catch every subtle change in sound as the ambulance drove closer to PPTH.

House sat on the low fence that separated the roof balcony from the deadly fall. His leg hurt more the longer he stayed up. He figured Chase's leg, still fresh from surgery, should probably be killing him. "You should consider selling them," he said when there were no more tree tops to count and he started to grow bored.

Chase turned to look at him again, dropping the pretence that he was comfortable on his feet and seating next to House. "What are you talking about?"

"Your paintings."

Several emotions played across Chase's face. Confusion about which paintings House could possibly be talking about; surprise as he realized that it were his paintings; and finally anger, as the Australian concluded that the only way for House to have seen what he considered the most private part of his life, was for the older man to be snooping around his home. "You had no right!"

"No, I had the key," House said, looking like the least repented person on Earth. "Ask nicely and I'll give them back. The place was trashed... wasn't me though. As for the car's empty tank, I'm making no comments."

Chase looked at House with contempt, grabbing his crutch and struggling to get up and put an end to their conversation. His good leg was shaking from the effort he had put it under before and now refused to cooperate with him.

Between the memories that refused to fade, the knowledge of the new him and House's intrusion in his private life, Chase felt like screaming his anger out. He settled for throwing the crutch away and seating back down, fuming.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" House's voice disturbed his rage, reminding him that the other man hadn't left yet.

"You would know, wouldn't you?" Chase replied, knowing that he was sounding like a five year old, but unable to prevent the bitter words from leaving his mouth.

"I would... but you're not upset because of the leg," House said, his tone for once serious and honest. "You're upset because what happen changed you for the worse and because of the leg you can't hide the fact that you're different. It's a bummer when denial is no longer an option."

Denial had been exactly what Chase figured would be his first reaction. But he could feel nothing but shame and anger at himself, his only consolation being the fact that, perceptive as House was, maybe the change would go unnoticed by the others. Maybe they would, unlike House, be distracted by the broken outside and ignore the broken inside. "It is a bummer," he finally confessed, allowing at last the chills and exhaustion to overtake his body.

House could almost sense the exact moment when the fight abandoned Chase's body and he started to tilt. "But it doesn't stay a bummer forever... Come on, lets get you back inside," he prompt, grabbing the young man' shoulders and waving the policeman closer.

Chase felt House's hands around him and somehow their presence didn't felt awkward, the underlying feeling that House wasn't there to tease him or make fun of his situation making them feel welcome. "Thank you for caring," he whispered.

House looked at the mop of blonde hair that was hiding the young man's face from his view, realizing that Chase had understood his reasons better than he had himself. "Don't mention it," he said sincerely.

"Really, don't ever mention it, or else people will start thinking that I have a heart or something..."

A sound in between a chuckle and a hiss of pain escape Chase's lips as the large policeman gently grabbed him and guided him back to his room.

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	12. Chapter 12

EPILOGUE

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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, four fancy words that some over the top, bright psychologist came up with to describe just about everything that you might say or do after some particular fucked up situation. And it works too.

The genius of it is that it doesn't explain why no two people experience it quite in the same way, it doesn't offer any pearls of wisdom about treatment, it doesn't even specifies how much post is the post part.

For Chase, post was about two months later.

Aside from the slight limp, the one that his therapist assure him would disappear in time, and the scar on his chest, the one that he avoided looking at whenever he took his clothes off, no one would ever guess how close to death he'd been a mere sixty days before.

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Detective Bree had called two days after their talk, ecstatic about the digital notebook that they had found exactly where Chase had told him to look. Apparently when open, the files that Thomas had went to so much trouble to hide and that Kazumasu had died trying to retrieve, were like Christmas come early for the entire police department. From the detective's excited conversation, the Australian figured that if he'd ever tired of being a doctor, the policeman would be glad to have him working in his department.

He should've been pleased by the policeman's words and he most definitively should've been happy about his contribution to aid in putting a stop to such organization. What he shouldn't have was that petty feeling of disappointment because Kazumasu hadn't lived long enough to see his failure, hadn't lived long enough to be punished for his mistakes. Revenge and hate, those were the acid feelings that seemed to come easier to Chase now, and already could he feel them eating his heart away.

Chase had spent a whole life tying to control his feelings and reactions, careful to never let more than what was necessary transpire in to his semblance, consciously aware that everyone occasionally liked to help the troubled teen who had a drinking mother and an absent father, but that other people's misery always grew tiresome and was better handled in small doses.

Eventually, tired of walking the thin line between emotionless drone and red-eyed boy, Chase had perfected his act in to a mirror-like condition, showing only what others wanted to see.

The big difference was that, unlike before when he hide his emotions to stop people from pitying him, now he had to hide them because he was ashamed of what he was feeling. His reactions had become self-centred and bitter and the conscious awareness of that scared him, scared him more than the physical changes.

House had been right. How could he hide a crippled soul behind a bum leg? How many times could he fake a smile and tell people that he was fine, when they saw him limping from place to place? How many phoney excuses could he come up with because he was tired of sharing the same tale with everyone that asked?

He could try to escape the questions and the looks, but he couldn't run away from himself and what he had become. He was still as helpless as before, hanging from a chain in the ceiling, and this time there was no sword's blade to put an end to his misery.

Chase had discharged himself from PPTH a week after Bree's phone call. His condition no longer required constant medical surveillance and the constant part of the surveillance was starting to get on his nerves. After two weeks spent under the care of others and completely or partially depended on them to do whatever he liked or needed, Chase was more than ready to craw away from under their microscope.

Going back to his apartment had been out of the question. From the descriptions that both House and Bree had given him, the sight of his trashed things was not one that he was ready to face just yet. There were things inside that apartment that meant more to him than his own skin and for now, he would rather live in the illusion that they hadn't been destroyed than going back there and be confronted with the truth.

With all the protesting voices over his, in their opinion, premature leave from hospital care, Chase ended up reaching a middle ground understanding with Cameron, Cuddy and Wilson. The oncologist had been living in the same hotel room for the most part of last year, so the place couldn't be that bad. He had booked a room for himself there too.

Much to his surprise, House had volunteered his chauffeur services to drive Chase's car and him there. Too tired and aching from his latest rehab session, Chase had just accepted the offer and was nodding off minutes after that, lulled in to unconsciousness by the low humm of the familiar engine.

He opened his eyes to discover himself in House's neighbourhood. "This isn't the right way," he mumbled, chasing the sleep from his eyes.

House made a show of looking the street names. "Are you sure? 'Cause I could've swear that this is it."

Chase gave him a glare that was completely wasted as the other man looked around for a place to park. It was still too far from House's home for that to be their destination and both his apartment and the hotel where Wilson was staying were on the other side of town. "What the hell are we doing here?"

"I offered to drive you home, remember?" House said, making it sound like he was talking to a brain damage person. He finally found a place that suited his purposes and parked the car. "We're just making a quick stop on the way."

"I'm not going home and the hotel is on the other side of town," Chase pointed out, leaning back in his seat, fully intended to sleep a bit more while he waited for House to run whatever errands he'd come here to run.

"Actually," the other man replied, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the car's door, "if by home you're referring to that mongrel place where you used to live, you can't because your previous landlord sort of kicked you out."

The Australian stared dumbstruck at the banging door as House left the car. "What?!" Chase blurted out, fumbling with his seat belt as he tried to manoeuvre belt, door and crutch with one good hand and a semi-collaborate one, to get outside. "He can't do that... I paid him two months in advance to prevent him from doing that!"

House shrugged. "Between the accent and the mob trash party, the guy said it was just too risky living downstairs from James Bond."

"James Bond's British," Chase mumbled by reflex.

"My point exactly," the older man said with a grin. There was no need to say anything about the anonymous phone call that House had made to said landlord, where he might've implied that Chase was a drug dealer and that it had been his competition who had trashed his apartment and that more acts of vandalism could be expected from the future.

A fresh start, that was what Chase needed to get back on his feet and House had made sure that he didn't had to see what had been done to the privacy of his home. Besides, a rich boy like Chase needed a better place than that bird's hole.

House fished a set of keys from his pocket. "As long as you're out of the car, you might as well come with me. Right this way, double 'O' Chase."

The Australian's mind was still reeling from the idea of being homeless as he blindly followed House. He barely looked at the row of two storey houses painted in various colours, or the ochre-coloured one that they stood near to. "What about my stuff?" He asked after a while, sounding slightly panicked.

There wasn't much that he had kept, except for his father's books and some of his mother's paintings, but with them gone, Chase wasn't sure he would be able to deal with the lost of the last links he had to his parents.

The lost look that overtook the Australian's eyes told House that he wasn't asking about his pots and plants and something akin to relief filled him, because he knew that the things that Chase was worried about were just on the other side of that closed door, most of them restored to their previous condition.

When the idea had first come to him, House had looked at his Vicodin bottle, wondering if he'd perhaps overdose himself without noticing, but now, seeing the reaction playing across Chase's face, he realized that they had done the right thing.

The surprise had been going on for a couple of weeks. He'd talked to Cuddy first, because she was the one who had to come up with the funds and then he had mentioned it to Wilson, because he needed his ex-wife's contacts. Wilson had let it escape to Cameron, who had simply run away with the idea.

Before House could fully understand how it had happen, the Vicodin induced thought of getting Chase a new place had simply grown to gigantic proportions and everyone who knew the Australian wanted to be a part of it.

Cuddy had managed to convince the lawyers of PPTH that the destruction of Chase's apartment and consequent expulsion were a direct consequence of his dealings with a patient, which meant that hospital's insurance should cover his loses. She had also managed to get Chase to sign the new house's papers without him even realizing what he was doing, mixing that particular document in the middle of others that he had signed while he was still recovering. If she had presented him with a certified IOU saying that his first born was to be given to her, Cuddy believed that he would've signed it too.

All in all, they had run a smooth and covert operation that would've put to shame the most secret of secret service's move and the only real work that House ended up doing was inside Chase' 'secret' room. The Australian had made it very clear how important it was for him to keep that part of his life private, and House had made sure that it would remain private.

He had wrapped Chase's paintings and his mother's, the ones that were still in one piece, before someone charted them to the new place and taken the ones that were in more than one piece to someone that could put them back together.

"Your stuff is more than safe," House finally answered, putting the key in the keyhole and turning. "Your stuff is already home."

Chase gave the older man a confused look and stepped inside the house. The late morning sun that entered through the living room's windows reached the small lobby, casting white fingers of light through the slightly dusty air. The house smelled of backed cake and fresh flowers and Chase wondered for one frightening moment whose house they were invading.

House lingered back, watching with interest as Chase tensed, seeming to sense the presence of more people inside the place. Cuddy, Wilson, Foreman, a cake holding Cameron and a number of PPTH staff that House couldn't name, opened the kitchen's door, making themselves visible. "Surprise!"

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Time had flown by after that, in between physical therapy and his daily struggle to get back to normal, like nothing had ever happen. And then, just when he was somewhat starting to feel whole again, it had started.

Completely innocent smells that would trigger such deep state of angst inside his chest that he could barely breathe; random sounds that had no business being scary but that made him jump in pure fright; ridiculous images and boring faces of people that, being absolute strangers, had no reason to cause the nauseous feeling that would send him racing to the nearest bathroom so that he wouldn't embarrass himself.

It was never the smell of raw fish as he had first feared, and it wasn't the sound of chains or car exhausters that might've resembled the sound of a gunshot; it wasn't even people of Asian descendent or even the sound of the Japanese language has he'd imagined. No, it was always the little things that he couldn't foresee, the situations that he couldn't control, the events that, at first glance, had nothing to do with what had happen to him. After awhile, Chase had given up on trying to predict them at all. Whatever set off his episodes, it always hit him hard and fast and he figured that he'd never sweated that much his whole life.

Going back to work, despite his insistence and Cuddy's reluctant agreement, had proven to be a mistake. After a couple of scares in the free clinic, Chase had stop going there all together, afraid that the next face behind the door, that the next word said out of the blue, might trigger something.

He avoided meeting the patients accepted by House for the same reasons, even though he didn't shared them with anyone. He had always something more important to do than his clinic hours; he rushed to the opportunity of working in the lab rather than near the patient.

And then there was the pain, the one that his therapist said to be a good sign, the one that made him snap at people when it was too intense for him to deal with, the one that he refused to take anything to diminish because he had a too good example of the consequences of that.

Between the limp, his apparent allergy to sick people and that new testy side of him, Foreman had resorted to call him House Two, often snickering that the pupil had finally become the master.

His lack of patience for proper bedside manners and apparent unwillingness to do his job right irked Cameron, not seating well her idea that doctors should take the time to hold their patients' hands at least once, or at least meet them. Unlike House, he didn't have the atoning fact of her having a crush on him to diminish his sins.

Neither thought back to a couple of months before, neither associated his odd behaviour to what had happened to him, because time moves on and once the bruises had disappeared from his face, so had his colleagues' concern.

He passed his days ignoring them both and thinking of new ways to hide his discomfort until it just went away, because he knew that it would go away. He just didn't want to lose his job in the mean time.

Ignoring Cuddy was harder. She had eventually pressed him against the wall, questioning him about his actions. Her memory seemed to be longer than the others' and the image of the Australian, mumbling in Japanese, beaten and disoriented in an ER bed was still fresh in her mind. She wanted him to seek professional help.

Chase clamed that in between hers, Cameron's, Wilson's and his therapist's peep talks, he didn't needed one more set of ears offering to hear his troubles, because the first four did it for free and got nothing. It wouldn't be the act of paying for it that would make him want to share his feelings.

The vacation time that House forced him to take was better received. The older man had accused him of being of no use to him and Diagnostic's messed up as he was, and Chase couldn't have agreed more.

Some time off would at least take him from under their constant inspection and give him the opportunity to get himself together.

The idea of going back to Australia hadn't even entered his mind until House threw a two-way ticket in to his hands, telling him that a month from then, he would be picking him up the airport in New York or he would be going to Sydney to get his money back.

Only as he sat in the plane, facing the perspective of fifteen more hours until landing, did Chase realize just how homesick he really was. He fished the old silver coin from his pocket, playing with it between his fingers. He knew exactly where he was going.

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Although they had changed its name, the St. Patrick' Seminary in Manly still held that gothic castle look about itself that had made so many fall in love with it. The old granite stones changed colours with the hours of the day, keeping time with the central tower where the clock and bell took charge of the facade.

Father Bishop crossed himself and laboriously started the painful process of rising from his knees to a standing position. Father Tibious had warned him many times that, at his age, the Lord would not frown upon his elderly follower if he just sat through Mass, but if there was something that the old Australian priest could not emend and erase from his personality, it was his stubbornness.

"It is hard to listen to the Lord's word when the whole church is deafened by your creaking joints, old man," a man's voice laced with the local swirl of tongue said, as a hand reached out to help him up.

The priest thanked the aid, his mind searching for a student's name to associate with the disrespectful words, when the feeling of cold metal warmed the touch between his and the stranger's hand.

He looked at the silver coin that had been left in his palm before looking up at the young man who had spoken. His brown eyes lit up in happy recognition. "One must listen to His word with the heart, not his ears," he said, enveloping the young man in a hug. "It's been too long, Robert."

Chase held the other man tightly, feeling the fragility of his old body and letting the smell of burned candle and incense take him back years in his life, to a time when, although complicated, his life still held the promise of fulfilment. "A whole life time, Father."

Father Bishop let the contact prolong itself until he sensed that the younger man was ready to let go. "It is good to see you again. I had resigned myself to leave this Earth without laying eyes on you again."

"I wasn't planning to come back," Chase confessed, awkwardly taking a step away from the old man. More than ten years had passed since he'd last seen this man and yet, he seemed to have barely changed at all. Chase wondered if the priest would think the same thing about him or if the differences would be evident to him.

"Come," the priest said, breaking the odd silence that had settled between two people who had so much to talk about. "Let's find you a place to stay and then you can tell me all about America."

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At night, the distant view of the Sydney Harbour was one of the most beautiful sights that Chase had ever seen. The lights of the tall buildings played with the water' surface, creating the illusion of a mirror city, where everything was upside down and slightly undulating. He felt like he was a citizen of that mirror city.

Much like House and his cane, Father Bishop had a particular way of walking that never left any doubt about whose footsteps it was. A light drag of one of the shoe's heel every couple of steps, a telling sign of a man wanting to walk faster than what his old legs would allow. "I think this is what I missed the most," Chase said when the footsteps stopped and the priest reached his side. "Every time I heard the sound of a tower bell, I would close my eyes and be back in here, right on this spot, feeling the smell of the sea on my skin and looking at the Sydney harbour."

"You could always stay this time around," Father Bishop suggested.

The idea had been playing around Chase's head even before the priest had put it in to words. He had tried to imagine how the people he knew would react to that. He'd figured that some, those who had no idea that he'd been in a seminary, would be surprise by his decision. Others, the ones that knew about that part of his past, would probably accuse him of indecision. House would laugh and rub it in everybody's nose that he'd been right all along when he said that Chase never wanted to be a doctor. He would probably send a letter asking for his plane ticket's money back too.

Chase had tried to imagine himself as a priest, trying to save souls instead of lives, but found out that he no longer could. Science and religion were two plates hard to balance on anyone' scale and Chase found himself in a place where he could no longer renounce one in favour of the other. "I've changed, Father Bishop… the Holy Orders are no longer for me."

"I meant in Australia, Robert," the old man said with a chuckle. "But I guess that two have always been connected for you, haven't they?" He asked more seriously.

Chase looked at the priest, figuring that in some way, he was probably right. His gaze flickered back to Sydney and he took a deep breath, soaking in the smell of home.

"Have you been to see him yet?"

The young man closed his eyes, knowing without asking of whom the priest was talking about. Somewhere across the field of water, in one of the most prestigious graveyards of the city, Rowan Chase had been buried over a year ago. He didn't even know the colour of his father's tombstone. "No," Chase whispered.

When Father Bishop had seen his long lost pupil back in the halls of St. Patrick, he had just assumed that the young man had finally returned to Australia to pay his father his last respects. He'd asked nothing about the haggard look, or about the limp, or even about the cold sweats that the young man would occasionally suffer for no apparent reason. He'd figured that Robert had returned to make his peace, if not with his father, with himself. He hoped that the young man was successful in at least one of them. "Still afraid of letting your heart feel, I see."

"Despite the statistics, feelings are more dangerous to the heart than high cholesterol," Chase remarked as if quoting some recent study.

The old man gave him an odd look and Chase sighed. That sort of nonsense half joke would've worked with the people he worked with. Father Bishop knew him better than that. "I lost something," Chase confessed, feeling that the isolated location and the darkness of it lend itself to that. All that was missing was the smell of burning candles and his knees pressed against the hard wooden floor. Instead of the creaking wood, he had the sound of the waves, breaking against the shore.

"_No evil is without its compensation. The less money, the less trouble; the less favour, the less envy. Even in those cases which put us out of wits, it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss that troubles us,_" Father Bishop recited by heart, hopping that those were the right words for the trouble young man by his side.

Chase kept his eyes on the dark water, lost in the criss-crossed patterns of light playing across its surface. "Socrates?"

"Seneca."

The young man took a deep breath and pushed his hands further in to his jeans' pockets. "I find it hard to see the compensation right now... all that I can see is an estimate price that is just too big for me to pay," he said, trying to keep his voice from breaking but failing miserably.

It was the old man's turn to sigh as he placed a calloused hand over Chase's shoulder. He could feel the fine tremors underneath the thin cotton shirt, even if the almost Summer night was too warm for that. "I can still remember the first time we spoke, all those years ago," he said, searching Chase's eyes. "Do you remember what you told me then?"

The intensivist shook his head. The memories of arriving at the seminary were surrounded by a mist of sorrow for his mother's death and his father's rejection.

"I asked you why did you believe in God and you said to me 'because for every action there is an equal reaction and with so much darkness in the world, God is the only reaction capable of equality'," the priest said, surprising Chase with his prodigious memory. "That told me a lot about you, Robert, and the sensitive soul that I saw then is still here, in front of me today, unchanged... what ever it is that you believe to have lost, I can tell you that it's only hidden from your view and not truly gone."

Chase felt the tears running down his face and quickly whipped them away. It really was a simple thing to say, but it had been exactly what he'd crossed half a planet to hear. "Thank you," he whispered to the priest, the genuine smile on his lips contradicting the water in his eyes. He wasn't crying in sadness, he was crying in relief, because hidden he could deal with a lot better than lost.

Father Bishop smiled in return, squeezing Robert' shoulder one last time before letting go. "It's past my bed time… you coming inside?"

"Not yet," Chase answered. He said his good-night to the old man and watched as he slowly walked across the gravel floor until his figure melted in to the shadows and disappeared.

The moon was almost full that night, and its silver light was enough to let him see his way towards the sea. Stripping off his clothes, Chase thought back to a time when this was the best part of his day, when every day he was free to just dive in to the warm water and forget about everything else. Now, years later, the feeling was still there and as Chase's body felt the salt liquid against his skin, he was sixteen again.

Three weeks later, he was ready to return to New Jersey and face the rest of his life.

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Unlike glass roofs, the ones that some people have and that are so easily broken, glass walls are common to each and everyone of us and everyone has to take care of its own.

Some lucky people managed to go through life surrounded by intact glass, thick protective barriers that shield them from the glacier feelings of despair and disappointment. It is that barrier that keeps little children innocent and naive through their tender years; it is that bubble that lends the smile on the lips of those who ignore pain or have forgotten how it tastes like; it is that shield that gives power to those who firmly believe that a higher power will keep them safe from harm.

Made of the purest and finest glass, most don't ever realize that the wall is there until it starts to crack. Tiny fissures in the otherwise smooth surface that give under the pressure of life, under the assault of fate. And then all that you can see are the cracks.

Chase's walls had started to crack a long time ago, in the days when he would lay in his bed trying to ignore the voices of his parents, arguing in the living room. From then on, the cracks just seemed to pile on, until there was no clear piece of glass through which he could look outside.

So he decided that glass walls were too much of a liability and that he was better off with solid walls, opaque, concealing walls, behind which he could hide his fears and forget about them.

That had been a mistake.

Because, contrary to what most people might imagine, glass walls aren't fragile and easily broken, and neither are they made of glass to make you feel insecure and expose. They're made of thick glass so that you can see the world outside your walls, so that you can experience life in all its colours and brightness, like an underwater diver, parted from the pulsing waters only by the layers of his suit.

Its only when you lose sight of that the walls tend to break. And then you drown.

Going back to St. Patrick's had felt like a gulp of air to the drowning Chase, even if he hadn't realized that he was losing his breath. And even though it had taken him time to realize it, the cliché had actually held true. That, which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

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The end

A.N: Oh, wow! It's over! Just a few words before I close this chapter of my writting 'career'.

St. Patrick's seminary is now actually called the Internacional College of Management and if you look it up on the internet, you'll see that it really is beautiful.

To all of you that reviewed this story since its first chapter, I love you all! You've been my rock, my ego stroker, my inspiration -hugs-

Happy reading!!


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